SEEMED LIKE HE hadn’t stopped crying, on the inside now, since Beth of two weeks and three more visits ago. And now he was back where all this had started.
The bad marriage he gave Beth, failings as a father to his kids, failure as a man, even as a simple provider. Here he was looking back at his life, before the adult years of heavy drinking had started, seeing it now for what it was: pubs and parties. Drink, always drink. The process of drink, how it made him feel wonderful, humorous, wittily dangerous, even interesting (as if a barely literate boozer could be interesting) and how each downed beer changed him.
He’d feel as if a chemical trickled into his muscles, his warped mind, which gave him a simple instruction: fight. Hit someone. It put him in a state — the same most every time — of seeing his wife as someone who, for reasons unasked, enraged him, whose very existence seemed reason enough to assault her. (Why?) Seeing a woman of defiance, with her own pride, as somehow this terrible threat. And in thinking of the man he was then, he nearly had to pull the jeep over to throw up.
Every hiding he gave his wife, every blow he struck against her innocent person, every fight with scores and scores of men, all those times of roaring like some encrazed beast, furious at the world, without ever asking why it was so, here’s where it began.
Maybe he had been incapable of asking any question of himself. (But what if that’s just a cop-out?) Right up till now, might be even to this very day, he had never asked himself what of the man, where is he going, why does he exist, and why does he do what he does?
(But I didn’t ask. I did not ask questions of myself, not once in all those years and not, as I recall, once whilst living here. Or did I?) Perhaps that was why he had come here, to find out if there had been a time when Jake did ask, when the young innocent Jake was with questions of self and the world. He was back at home —
No! It wasn’t home! It was a pigsty! We were the Hekes, descendants of slaves, who lived how they, the effin’ community, told us. Bloody cultured Maoris they were meant to be, and yet they condemned us without trial, without the right to speak up on our own behalf. Cast in the roles they defined for us — slaves. That’s your line of descendancy, you Heke shits, from captured warriors lost of all their mana. Treated us like mongrel dogs, any wonder we grew up to be just that.
Seven of us kids, crammed into a tiny hut-like house, near eating each other’s shit it was so crushed. Where are they now, my six brothers and sisters? We didn’t grow up close to each other, despite the tight physical proximity, not with no good mother nor father to hold us together, no binds of love, nor sense of family. Slaves. Haven’t seen one of them, except one brother — Matty — in a brief visit to Two Lakes so long ago I wouldn’t know what he looked like.
And why would we be close, growing up like piglets in a sty fighting for every scrap of food. How did they pay the rent? Or did his parents own our little hovel? Why was beer the number one priority in the household budget? (And you went on to repeat the cycle, didn’t you, Jake?)
Where’s my family now, still here, all gone, how many dead? My parents must be long dead.
Jake’s stomach was in a knot since he hit this shithole. Driving slowly through a forest village in his jeep, not believing what he was seeing, asking who was the guilty party. (Me or them?) He couldn’t believe that those who’d looked down on him and his family and who he’d looked up to still lived like this — this!
This place was worse than the baddest part of Pine Block. This was hardcore welfare country out in the sticks. This was where they got the name Hicksville. A forestry town, a step back into an era gone way past its use-by date, from the fifties, when people settled for less because they knew less or didn’t know at all. Houses of peeled paint, rotting timbers, sagging everywhere, like the air punched out of someone. Downed by new economic realities, left behind with their fixed outlooks. Modern machines and ever-increasing efficiencies of forestry practice had caught these folk on the hop. If it wasn’t for the welfare system they wouldn’t be here, and nor would the houses (more like huts).
Look at these people sitting on front steps, in the shade of verandas close to collapsing, leaning on car wrecks, on fences, ain’t none going nowhere, not today, next year, next decade, none of them. This is loser territory, Jake, so what’re you doing here? Get the hell out. Able to see the irony, too.
Yet finding himself in the pub — there was only one — but not because of a beer thirst. Not quite four o’clock of a nice Thursday summer afternoon, though rained off the job back in Two Lakes. From out of this beer-stinking, smoky murk a thought comes in stark contrast: Beth. (Who would have believed it? Us back in the sack? Friends again, or maybe for the first time, how could this be?)
Her image, her voice in his head, the tingling sensation of her body, he had to shut it down. Now I’m back in another unexpected past place. My old man used to drink here. With the alcoholics, the scum amongst scum.
Up to the bar, aware of the eyes on him, most too tired of spirit to be astonished, but curious suspicion like a silent, collective scream.
He asked for a bottle of DB and the barman said, Don’t I know your face, brother?
Jake said, I don’t think so.
The barman said, I do think so. You’re Jake Heke aren’t you?
And then Jake remembered. Are you Bobby? Used to be at school with me?
I sure am, Jake. School with you all the way to the —
Third form, Jake said. I left that year and so did you. You been here all this time?
Yeah, why not? Though Jake did notice Bobby’s shift to defensiveness. Well, I’ll be. Jake Heke, eh. Pumped Jake’s hand, beaming. We used to hear about your reputation in Two Lakes. Felt proud one of our boys was showing those Two Laker snobs what a real fighter was.
Jake remembered, from time to time, different men from here introducing, or re-introducing themselves, when he ruled McClutchy’s like his own kingdom, and how he used to dismiss them as from a past he didn’t want to know.
This one’s on the house, Jake. For old times.
Bobby filled a beer glass and lifted a toast to Jake, then offered him a cigarette, which he declined.
Don’t smoke.
You don’t? Bobby genuinely surprised, as if he felt Jake should not only smoke but smoking would say something of him, that he was the same person, as Bobby was, as they all were here.
He called to another barman that he was going to take an hour out, catch up with this old friend. Faces were looking at Jake, saying they knew him, even if he’d left here as a teenager, faces stick in a place like this; nodding, giving signals they might be more receptive once they got a handle on the man.
What to say, when one man on his own admission had only ever been out of town on rugby trips, and the other knew his own life had hardly been one of meeting a succession of challenges. Bobby talked about his rugby team, of local matters of importance to him and his tiny community; he complained about the wider world, as if it hourly conspired to do further hurt to this infinitesimal satellite settlement. He waxed bitter at how so-and-so over there — you must remember him, Jake, he was one year ahead of us at school, Simbi’s brother, Henry McCabe — had owed Bobby fifty dollars for over four years now. Thinks a man’s forgotten. (When you don’t, do you, Bobby? Not living here.) He gossiped like a bored small-town housewife about the things that had become important to him, like who’d had an affair with who’s wife, who got caught, who didn’t, the memorable brawls, the drinking feats, every little scandal and trivial incident.
It was light conversation to Jake. (Is this how I used to talk?) He wanted meaning. (I want to know who I am, about this place that may have made me. Or may not have.) And if he didn’t find it then it must mean a man made his own meaning, the circumstances he was born into notwithstanding. And then what?
(Then I’ll be free of one more burden, maybe the biggest, outside of my dead children.)
Jake tried to get Bobby recalling their childhood so he might find a clue. But Bobby was next onto the local senior rugby side and its long-standing rivalry with the forestry village up the road thirty ks. His only childhood recollection being acts of theft he and Jake did, fights they got into.
Jake asked of his own family, were they around? Bobby said, You up and left and never came back, not once, Jake Heke. He then reeled off Jake’s family’s names; the end of it had two brothers dead, both car crashes, both pissed out of their minds, poor bastards, left children both of them, so you got a lot of nephews and nieces running around here, Jake. Want me to introduce two of them in this bar right now?
No, Jake didn’t feel like being introduced to blood, not more Hekes who’d chosen to stay in this hole.
The three sisters married men from the rival village, so they were effectively the enemy who still lived there and were sure to have large tribes of children. What women are for, eh, Jake? To breed and give men pleasure. (Surely I didn’t think and talk like this?) The voice in Jake’s head saying: You did.
The last brother — Bobby was surprised Jake hadn’t heard about — got sent down for murder, did the deed right there over by the toilet door, clubbed Chubb Patu to death with a billiard cue, got life. Jake trying to get a mental picture of his brother Matty, but nothing came.
Your old man he passed on, oh, must be twenty years ago now, we weren’t surprised you didn’t turn up for his funeral, not many did, being what he was.
(Who he was, too, and nor did I know he’d died, though I wouldn’t have come to his funeral.) Jake only nodded at being informed he’d not had a father for twenty years or so.
Leaves only your old lady, Bobby said. She’s still around.
Which shocked Jake mightily. My old lady?
Your mother.
(My mother? I never ever called her Mum. She was just the old lady, or had no title at all except ‘her’, said with venom mostly.)
Jake managed to sound calm in asking if she still lived in the old place.
Guess she does, Bobby said, but I wouldn’t know. I never went to your house, for all those years of growing up with you, Jake. Dunno why. Guess kids thought it was spooky, living in the trees and what they said about you Hekes — oh, not that I ever went along with that stupid talk, Jake. I was your mate.
The conversation fell off into longer and longer silences. Jake knew it was the rigid rule to buy Bobby a beer, then he politely took his leave.
On the way out the familiar faces: haggard, booze-ridden, but worse with this kind of denied truth sitting at the back of every red and tired eye, of men who know they’ve surrendered their souls in existing like this: Joe Nobodies, gone nowhere, done nothing, beer soaks. Made even Jake feel a little more accomplished, less cowardly in comparison.
Back on the streets of Maharoa, he’d driven right back into a forty-yearsa-go past. Nothing had changed, just got older, houses more dilapidated, when in childhood they’d seemed large compared to the Heke’s lone dwelling. The inhabitants were now clearly on welfare, when back then they had jobs and at least a certain dignity; now with that profoundly uninterested look. Tired. The houses, the people, tired not from hard work but from not making the effort. Jake in slow drive, shaking his head at the sights.
He found himself on the village outskirts, and the road was tar-sealed now when he had known it as bare dirt beneath bare feet, stones that stopped hurting after a few years (yet the inner hurting never stopped). He pulled the jeep over and walked the last of maybe a hundred metres, between tall pine trees where the road seal ceased, and he returned as a man to his childhood past.
He took off his shoes, socks, placed them by the side of the road and marked the spot with two stones. He walked with immediate pain, yet it was kind of wonderful. Back to nature, to childhood; the birds singing, insects noising, sunlight playing in the foliage, the smells, flower scents. This could be a hunting trip. That is, until the trees crowded in on the road and it got chilly, eerily so, and it looked as if the road would shortly run out.
There, a glimpse of a dwelling, which sent shivers, becoming shock waves, through his being. Is she here? How old would she be? Late seventies? It’s possible. Thinking of her made him shiver the more. Maybe because she wasn’t such a good mother, though then again his memories weren’t setting off alarm bells either. Who knows, maybe she did her best? How old was I when I left this place? Fourteen. Left school before the legal age and hitch-hiked to Two Lakes. No dreams, just wanted to get away. (Wanted to express my anger.)
The trees closed in and there: a rusted sliver of iron roof catching the sun; reddish-brown weatherboards. Must’ve been abandoned years ago. (Years ago, li’l jake.) Jake thought he heard this voice, but it was only in his head, that little boy of so long ago it’s a wonder he even recognised it. Years ago, li’l jakey.
Bare foot, back on home territory. (No it wasn’t home. It was a pigsty. No, not even pigs would’ve lived like we did. Jammed into that tiny cabin stuck out middle of the forest they had planted just before I was born. Now it’s over fifty years old and surely should have been cut down twenty years ago. Maybe it’s Maori land, maybe it always was Maori-owned? How did we get to live here? Was it owned by the forest company?)
Bare foot, the man back in his childhood had to push aside branches at the last, then he stepped into a surprise clearing, like those you come upon when you’re out in the wilds hunting. No reason for their existence is evident, or none you care to seek out; enough to just enjoy, appreciate nature pulling a surprise on you.
Except this told its own explanation. This was someone’s rough lawn, mown by that tethered sheep thick with unshorn wool, munching away. It might be fly-blown. Jake was suddenly nervous, indeed anxious. Make that spooked. I left this shithole as a fourteen year old, went to Two Lakes and never came back, had no desire to. So, why didn’t my old man put up a fight? Least I can say I fought against it, with my fists, even if that turned out so wrong. Least it said Jake Heke ain’t gonna let no one tell him he’s inferior. Eff them. He’ll knock you over if you talk to him like that. In the old days he did. So why didn’t you show some pride, father of mine?
By the time he had thought those thoughts, his bare feet had taken him across the clearing near to the front door. If this dwelling had been made of logs, this would be out of a movie, a little log cabin in a magical kind of forest. With an old Maori lady standing in the doorway —
He stopped dead in his shoeless tracks, and heard himself say: Mum? Thinking: No, it can’t be. Told she was alive but realising now she’d been dead in his mind a long while.
The old woman said, Who’s that? Who you? Who invited you here? I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m on a pension. Peering at him, recognition flooding her.
Jake? Is that you, Jake? Can it be you? Are you my long-lost son?
He muttered, Yes, but made no move to embrace her. (We weren’t even near to close.)
Where you been all this time? Why’d you up and leave without telling your mother? Was I that bad? Did I deserve that, all those years of worrying about you, what you were up to — the bad you might be up to? Is it really you, Jake? Is it you, li’l jake?
It’s me. (Yet I know now, in this instant, it’s not me. Was once me, but should never have been me. I didn’t have to spell my name in my head with a small j. It didn’t have to be set in the concrete of my head in lower case. Then I wouldn’t have had to create the counter reaction, the fighting legend, acquire that mindless reputation, take that childish moniker, the Muss. How I made my entire existence stand for being a man with indomitable fighting muscles. I was better than that. Or should have been.)
Now look who’s before me: my old lady. She used to thrash us for the smallest reason, or no reason at all. Least I made sure I never laid a hand on my kids, the other bad stuff aside. And she was hardly beside herself with emotional joy, still that suspicious, volatile Miria Heke of old, ready to lash out with hand or nearest hard object or cutting words. (You idiot! You stupid shit! No wonder they call us the slave line.)
But hell, that was back then. Those years are gone. She can’t have many left. So what does a man do? I can’t find it to hug her. I can’t.
Yet he made himself do exactly that: he hugged her. She felt frail, when she used to be a big woman (with fat, stinging hands and a cruel tongue), this reduced form so vulnerable in his strong arms. Though no emotion came. None. This was duty. Forgiveness. Like Beth had forgiven him. Neither deserved it.
She pulled away from his embrace, ran eyes over him and asked, What’d you bring me? Why didn’t you bring me something nice?
He smiled and said, I never even meant to bring myself. (Mum.) Guess I thought you’d passed on.
Well, I haven’t. Why’d you leave, Jake? I got left to another fifteen years of your father —
He wasn’t my father.
Oh? So what was he — your damn uncle?
I don’t remember him as a father. (Nor you as a mother.)
Well, he wasn’t. Not a husband either. You mean to say you didn’t bring me anything after all these years? Shame on you twice, boy. For leaving me then coming back home with nothing to show for it. You got even a lousy smoke? I ran out. Pension doesn’t go in the bank till next Tuesday, every fortnight. The man comes and picks me up to get the money out, take me to the supermarket. I don’t buy much, smokes are so much these days and they always run out. Always.
(We do a lot of your always, Mum. Always getting drunk, always getting violent, always broke, always never getting it, do we, this life in front of us.
It’s like it’s a big wall we refuse to learn how to climb over. Always.)
I don’t smoke.
She rocked back on her heels in disbelief. Don’t tell me that. Everyone smokes. You’re a Heke. Smokes killed your father. He’d wake himself up middle of the night to have one.
Jake shrugged, couldn’t care less if she believed him or not. You live here by yourself?
Me and the damn possums, every night on the roof. You’d remember them.
(Yes, he remembered, with his siblings scaring themselves that they were the feet of ghosts come to get them.) Yeah, I remember them.
I still do my own cooking. Refused their damn meals on wheels like I’m a cripple. Got my pride. I forget all the time. But not you. Her eyes narrowed, as if with a thirty-six-year late anger. Come in.
She led him inside, the smell returned the boyhood in the instant. Too many smells to specify, nor need to. They just were. Some of it stench. Boiled cabbage and fatty meat. Mutton flaps, the childhood staple within these walls. And drink and violence from both parents. (Always.) This was the house he knew and yet did not love for a moment.
In the tiniest sitting room, weak light came from a single window on the wrong side to the tracking sun; two sofas from another era, one with the springs showing. The shock of seeing the same newspaper wallpapering. The floor, though, was no longer dirt but laid over with wooden planking.
You had the floor done?
Yeah. Too cold for a old woman. This is where you used to sit, front of that fire in the winter — long as your father wasn’t around, drunk more usual, wanting the fire to himself. Why’d you go, Jakey?
He took time in answering. So he wouldn’t word it wrong. Drew in deep breath and said, Because I hated it. I hated being a Heke, descendant of slaves. Those up themselves villagers, as if they could talk. I’ve just driven around, went in the pub, they’re the ones descended from slaves, not us. Hated them saying that. Hated him, the old man, hated being hungry all the time, hated the drinking by you both. I —
She silenced him with a raised hand. You hated it all, but then I bet you went out and did the same yourself.
(How did she know that?) Guess I did.
The old lady smiled crookedly. No guessing to it. It’s how it is, son. Life keeps repeating itself.
Surprised at her homespun wisdom, he was nonetheless of his own view. Not unless you stop it repeating.
She burst out in an old woman’s cackle, an unpleasant sound; as if an illness was on every expelled breath. Or death was. So how did your life work out?
Not so good. But not so bad now. In fact, now it’s real good. (Specially that I’m seeing Beth again. A chance to redeem myself, to show her another, better man.) His mother’s differently crooked smile said she was not believing him again. Then she said, You sure you don’t smoke? Or you don’t wanna give me one?
He had to grin. I gave it up. Years ago. Bit late for you. I’ll go and buy you a packet — a carton.
You do that. But let’s talk first.
And they did and it wasn’t a revelation to understanding himself, the adult he’d become and fortunately not stayed like. Just listening, mostly, to a familiar old voice — watching a face he knew so well and yet, really, had never known at all, nor would know — saying basically nothing. Just a list of an old person’s complaints and not a little bitterness.
There wasn’t anything to know. She was just a less than ordinary person who hadn’t done even half her best, soon to fade off the planet and leave not even a blank space.
Yet he came away less burdened, if only in the realisation that he should have got over this growing-up baggage ages ago.