ONE THAT GOT AWAY

ONE THAT GOT AWAY
1730 words





Apart from the smell Spindrift Bay is as pleasant a village as one could find anywhere; Population one thousand two hundred and fifty eight, McGarrity’s Hotel with Karaoke every second Friday and plenty of work if you’re not fussy. Most of us go to the freezing works at Tangora. Baldy Kirton and his boys run two trawlers, long line and crayfish pots. His fish plant stinks a bit, especially in summer, but we just hold our breath when we walk past and the houses up on the hill plant roses and lavender in their gardens.
Being so small we soon get to know what’s going on. Gossip goes around here at about twice the speed of light. When someone new comes to the Bay the first to spot them are Kevin and Stan at Speedy Service Panel Beating, next to the bus stop. If they’re having a quiet day Kev and Stan can watch them all the way down the main street, past Tanya’s Hair Salon, McFarlane’s Farm Supplies and Patel’s Superette. By the time a newcomer passes Harwell’s Real Estate Kev’s worked out what they do for a crust and Stan’s made some pretty educated guesses at why they’re in town and where they’ll stay. They’re not always right, of course, but they never let facts get in the way of a good story
When it comes to jumping to conclusions Young Kevin could be the high, long and wide champion of just about everywhere. He has this unparalleled talent for taking off from a flimsy premise, building an hypothesis in space before he leaps to an incredibly complicated conclusion, usually landing flat on his face. Like the time that young bloke in a T shirt and jeans got off the bus with his sports bag. Kev and Stan watched him stride past Harwell’s Real Estate, MacFarlane’s Farm Supplies and Patel’s Superette. By that time Kev had decided the newcomer had come to sign on Baldy’s trawler. Turned out he was the new Pastor for the Baptist church. Kev maintained he was half right, because JC was a fisherman wasn’t he? Once Kev reaches a conclusion the combined power of all McFarlane’s tractors won’t shift him.
The trouble with young Kev is he’s never been anywhere. Other youngsters finish school and head off to Polytech, or overseas on their great adventure. Not Kev, all he ever wanted to do was fix cars and drive hot rods. So he stayed here in Spindrift Bay, population one thousand two hundred and fifty eight last census, helping Stan fix things at Speedy Service & Panel Beaters and joining the boy racers in Waimari on Friday and Saturday nights.
You’d think Kev would learn, especially after what happened with Dulcie. She arrived one hot Friday in November. The smell of Mrs Barraclough’s roses almost smothered the perfume from Baldy’s fish plant. The bus pulled in at 2:15, as usual and a few bored faces looked down to the main street where Bert Arthur’s fox terrier was sniffing around the lamp posts. The door hissed. The driver strutted down to open the luggage compartment But Kev and Stan’s attention was riveted on the blond getting off the bus. She looked about sixteen going on thirty two and she wore pretty much what Kev and Stan did under their overalls, black singlet that didn’t quite meet the jeans which were at least two sizes too tight and bulged in interesting places.
The bus driver unloaded a backpack, nearly as big as its owner, and probably heavier. He helped the girl settle the straps over her shoulders. She fastened the waist belt and shrugged it into place before setting off through the town. Kev was so mesmerised he dropped his spanner. The back pack on legs turned towards the noise and smiled. That smile would have made Julia Roberts look tight lipped.
“Hi Stan!” she called, but kept on walking.
“Whaawrrh!” breathed Kevin, “Who’s that?” And Stan could tell he was already constructing a hypothesis about an international film star coming to make a movie that would feature Kev as the home town boy who conquered her with his charm and sophistication.
“Buggered if I know,” said Stan, staring at the green pack tramped past the Superette. “Wait a minute! Yes, I do know! It’s young Dulcie.”
“Dulcie?” the only Dulcie Kevin could remember had been fat and spotty, two years ahead of him at Spindrift Bay Primary.
“You know, George Baylis’s daughter. Lived in the yellow house up on Devon Street. “
“Dulcie Baylis?” She was the fat, spotty one. “Scrubbed up O.K hasn’t she. What’s she doing back here?”
“Same as all the young ones, I suppose. Come home when they can’t get a job.” Tom Ferris from the organic farm rang to ask when his ute would be ready so Kev and Stan went back to work.
Meanwhile the back pack and its owner strode up Hill Street and that was the last Spindrift Bay saw of them for the best part of a week.
“See young Dulcie’s back.” Stan remarked to the regulars in McGarrity’s on Friday night.
“Yeah. Don’t reckon she’ll stay long,” said McFarlane’s Farm Supplies, draining Speights through his moustache.
“Nothing here for young ones,” said Baldy’s eldest, pouring himself DB dark Brown, “‘specially girls.”
“There’s a couple of sheilahs on the line at Tangora,” said the Tasman Brown. He drives the works bus over the killing season and helps Baldy in the fish plant the rest of the year. “They do pretty well with the knife too, considering.”
The consensus was that Dulcie, who hadn’t bothered to come home for her Dad’s funeral, would sell the yellow house on Devon Street and take off again.
When Dulcie walked in with Nancy from Harwell’s seven heads continued studying wet rings on the bar, while seven pairs of eyes swivelled through ninety degrees following the two women to the hens’ table. Stan’s ex and the two sheilahs from the meat chain were already there. They kissed the air around Dulcie’s cheek and chirruped enthusiastic greetings.
The karaoke sheilah came in to set up. She keeps her gear in a trailer that she tows behind her old Ford Falcon and she dresses like Elvis in his final days. Stan helped her carry everything in, mainly because his ex was at the hens’ table and he never missed a chance to show her what she’d lost, like a nice helpful gent that other sheilahs appreciated. But his ex was busy talking to Dulcie and took no notice. Then the Karaoke sheilah talked him into singing a duet with her about endless love. His ex kept on talking to the sheilahs from the meat chain.
Stan went back to the bar. Kev almost had his neck in a knot trying to keep Dulcie in his sights.
“Go over and chat her up,” Stan suggested. “Take a jug for the table.”
But Kev just kept staring, building his dream about why such a cracker had come back to Spindrift Bay. Baldy’s youngest took a jug over while Nancy was singing Scarborough Fair and he spent the rest of the night perched between Dulcie and Stan’s ex, wrapped in engrossing conversation that required his chair to move ever closer to Dulcie’s while he emphasised each point with a touch on her arm. Often he thought of something so confidential he needed to whisper close to her ear, at the same time lifting a tress of blonde hair to improve audibility.
About ten o’clock Dulcie and the other women took off. Baldy’s youngest came back to the bar, but by that time we were discussing the perennially dismal state of Kiwi cricket and he didn’t enlighten anyone about why Dulcie had returned to Spindrift Bay.
Time went by. Nancy never nailed a ‘FOR SALE’ sign to the Baylis fence, and no photograph featuring the yellow house as a ‘des res’ appeared in Harwell’s window. .
Of course Kev and Stan, being blokes, didn’t pry in to what had brought young Dulcie back. They just happened to mention it in passing to Mrs Patel at the Superette, Steve Hodges at the Fire Brigade, Barney McGarrity at the pub and a few other cronies, just to make conversation, like.
“See young Dulcie’s back in town,” Kev remarked to Nancy when she came in for a warrant of fitness.
“Yeah,” said Nancy, communicative as a clam.
“She planning to sell her Dad’s house?”
“Don’t think so. I could do with a few extra properties but Dulcie hasn’t mentioned it.”
“She should have come back for her old man’s funeral then.” said Kev.
“Couldn’t, she was in Chile on a study tour.” Nancy drove away down the main street.
When Stan’s ex dropped the children off for his weekend she told the men to mind their own business and whatever Dulcie Baylis decided to do was entirely her own affair. After his ex had sashayed down the front path in high heels and higher dudgeon, Stan’s daughter, full of nine year old hubris, announced,
“I know what Dulcie’s doing.’”
“Yeah?” said her Dad, “What’s Dulcie doing then?”
“She’s a hooker.”
Kev’s beautiful fantasies came crashing down in a cloud of disillusion. September 11th was nothing compared to the crash of his dreams.
“How’d ya know that?” asked Stan.
“Dulcie told Mum. She said she needed money over the holidays and so she was going to be a hooker, down at the wharf. Mum said she wished she’d thought of it first,” Stan’s cherub sent her father a roguish glance under her eyelids.
“That’s enough of that, young lady. Ya don’t know what ya talking about.”
“Do too,” But the men had heard enough. They sent the girls to play outside.
Stan, seeing the desolation on Kev’s face, tried to comfort him.
“Heard quite a few ‘Varsity girls do it when their loans get too high. They stop when they graduate.”
“She should be run out of town,” snarled Kev. He avoided Karaoke evenings after that. He ignored Dulcie when she spoke to him in the Superette. Stan told him Dulcie seemed to be spending most of her time with Baldy’s youngest. Kev grunted, and broke the end off a nut he was tightening in the vet’s station wagon.
On the last day of February Kev and Stan watched from their workshop doorway as Dulcie boarded the 12:38 bus north. Baldy and his youngest were there. Dulcie hugged them both and Baldy’s youngest planted first a peck on her cheek and then a real lip smacker which lasted until the bus driver beeped his horn. Nancy and Stan’s ex came along to wave goodbye.
“See young Dulcie’s gone then,” Stan remarked as Baldy came in for a spare fuse for his boat engine.
“Only temporary,” Baldy told him. “Best little hooker I’ve ever had. She can bait a string faster than I can. Got one more semester to go then she’s coming back to Spindrift Bay permanently.” Baldy hitched his belt and rested one foot on a box of wing nuts. “She’ll be Dr. Baylis, Ph.D.in Marine Biology! She wants to work on the trawler, something about conserving pelagic fish populations. What she doesn’t know about fish isn’t worth knowing. Taught me a bit I’m telling you.”
“Bet she did!” Kevin slammed down the bonnet of Nancy’s 4 wheel drive so loud Bert Arthur’s fox terrier stopped piddling on the plane trees and took off down the main street.
But Kev’ll never learn. He’s got his eye on the new receptionist at Mon Desir Motel, all short skirts and long legs. She’ll eat him for breakfast.

THE DOWSER’S TALE

By

Waiata Dawn Davies

I

All that morning I had been up at Tom Beresford’s farm, walking back and forth across his paddocks, holding two bits of bent wire. Eventually they had kicked almost out of my hands and that was where I drilled through dry clay, through stones and rocks until eventually there was a grunt, a gurgle and water had spurted our of the pipe; muddy at first but finally clear and fresh.

By the time the cattle trough was full Tom’s missus was on her third load of washing and she was singing like a thrush on a fence post. I stayed for a cuppa and we sat on their verandah watching white thunderheads creep above the hilltops. After months of drought rain clouds were finally spreading across the sky, so I got in my ute and headed south

switched on the radio.

“Wairarapa’s last surviving Gallipoli veteran, Archibald McKinley died today at his home near Pirinoa, aged one hundred and four..”

Arch McKinley had been at Passchendale, not Gallipoli; told me himself.

I stopped for petrol at Greyrown. Young Mark washed the windscreen while the tank filled. He kept talking about the show the College kids were putting on. ‘Songs From WW1.’

The missus buzzed, reminding me to buy eggs. Big drops of cold rain set my wipers clicking. It was only four o’clock but I had to put the headlights on. At College corner I slowed as a bus pulled round, heading south past the old pines. Moments later a girl ran out the College gate, waving and hallooing. Joe McKinley’s youngest, Nettle.

Did she know her great grandfather had died?

I would have offered Nettle a ride, but nowadays they think every bloke’s a rapist, even if he went to school with their grandmother. I decided to offer her a lift if she was still there when I came back from the egg farm. As I slowed to turn into Dave Naylor’s gate a car came hooting out, Pete Rodman’s red Capri, its horn playing Dixie.

At the packing shed Dave hosed smashed eggs from the walls.

“Bastard” he muttered, “Took the cash box. Second time this month!”

“That was Pete Rodman’s car,” I said. “He wouldn’t scramble your eggs.”

“Pete wouldn’t but his boy would.”

I couldn’t imagine any emergency dire enough for Pete to let young Stan drive his precious Capri.

We found enough unbroken eggs to fill a tray and I left. At the corner I waited for the afternoon rush to pass, a petrol tanker, a stock truck, three four wheel drives all rushing. I let them go. Young Nettle was not sheltering under the pines or striding backwards with her thumb out.

At Tauheranikau the Tin Hutt’s red roof stood above river fog, thick as whipped cream. Trees and fence posts were grey shadows. Beyond the river some trick of the light made the road look narrow, with more trees, macrocarpa, manuka. At Camp Road the ute died; lights, indicators, engine, everything. I drifted to the verge, tried the usual things, nothing worked so I raised the bonnet to check the linkages.

Just then Pete Rodman’s Capri came belting out of Camp Road and took off south in a shower of gravel. A bugle sounded and a soldier, all-brass buttons and braid, cheese cutter cap, polished riding boots, rode out from Camp Road on a big chestnut. He turned towards Featherston before backing his horse up until its hindquarters were against my bumper. Even the horse’s ears stood at attention.

I coughed, said, “Excuse Me!”

I stepped away from the ute and nearly fell into the ditch where water was braiding and purling over gravel in the bottom.. The officer and his horse stared south after the Capri’s tail light.

The bugle sounded again. Soldiers ran from long huts. They were a scruffy lot, wrinkled khaki shirts, braces holding up baggy trousers; none of the action man outfits the real army wears. No berets but slouch hats. Someone making a film, I thought. Sergeants shouted, corporals shoved and soldiers shuffled. When the bugle sounded again they marched off in fours. As they passed out the gate they turned eyes right to the officer on the horse.

Young Nettle stood by the fence. As the soldiers passed she stepped towards one whose hat was pushed to the back of his head. She walked beside him for a few paces. He smiled at her, but didn’t stop. He marched out the gate, turned eyes right.

Then it all vanished. Headlights rushed up and down Highway 2, not a soldier, or horse in sight. Just young Nettle looking like a drowned rabbit as rain dripped through her hair, off her jacket, into her shoes. I handed her my mobile, told her to ring her Mum, pretended to roll a cigarette while Nettle’s blue fingers pressed the numbers.

“Mum?”

Squawks.

“I told you we had a rehearsal. I missed the bus.”

More squawks.

“I’m at Camp Road. Jack Driller lent me his mobile.” She passed the phone to me.

“ “Mum wants to talk to you.”

Myrtle McKinley’s voice was almost incoherent with all the static on the mobile. I offered to drive young Nettle home.

“Can’t understand . . . got enough on my . . . . Thanks Jack.”

“What went on back there?” I asked Nettle, but she stared out the side window pretending not to hear.

When we drove up the hill to McKinley’s farm Nettle slammed out of the ute and scuttled inside. The house was lit up enough to keep the wind generators turning all year. Myrtle’s sister’s blue Mitsubishi was in the yard. I waited a couple of minutes, wondering if anyone would acknowledge my presence, and finally pulled around to leave. Joe McKinley came out the back door and across the yard. He tried to be casual but just looked as though his piles were hurting.

“Er. Thanks for bringing her home, Jack.” he started.

“No trouble. Couldn’t leave the kid stranded. Sorry about your Grandfather. ”

“We’re in a bit of a flap here. Myrtle went to take him his cuppa and there he was, dead. Bit of a shock for her. But she says you’d better come in.” As we crossed the yard I told Joe about finding Nettle on Camp Road.

“I would have offered her a lift back at the College,” I told him, “but these days you have to be careful.” He nodded.

The kitchen was full of red headed women; Myrtle’s mother was beating something in the Kenwood. her sister, Daphne Rodman had a headlock on a big yellow bowl and was whipping for dear life. Myrtle was slapping trays against the bench until the muffins surrendered and fell out. Judging by the heat in the kitchen and the scones, muffins, and lamingtons cooling on the kitchen table, they’d been at it for some time.

Nettle was drying her hair, looking as though she found the entire bustle entirely tasteless. The three witches stopped beating and whipping when we came in. They looked as though they would like to transfer activities to me. I was not going to be offered a cuppa, or a lamington, not even a scone.

“Why is my daughter so late?” asked Myrtle, no ‘Gidday Jack. Thanks for bringing her home ten miles out of your way.’

“As though Myrtle hasn’t got enough on her plate,” chimed Daphne Rodman.

“I told you. I missed the bus. Jack gave me a lift, ” said Nettle as though she was doing everybody a favour by speaking.

“Mr. Driller to you, my girl,” said Nettle’s grandmother. Joe opened his mouth but he didn’t have a chance. Myrtle kept asking where had I taken Nettle between four and six o’clock. Daphne told us Myrtle had enough on her plate. Jenny Andrews said young people had too much freedom, and at my age I should know better, as if Myrtle didn’t have enough on her plate. Finally Nettle screamed, a real cow cocky’s bellow.

“You’re not listening! I told you. He,” pointing at me, “gave me a ride home.”

“Don’t you speak to your mother like that.” Joe managed at last. “Now, tell your mother where you were when Jack picked you up.”

“As if she hasn’t got enough on her plate,”

“Shut it, Daphne. Now, Nettle.”

Nettle stared out the window and mumbled, “I missed the bus.”

“And?”

“He gave me a ride.”

“We should ring the police,” Daphne did Women’s Studies at Massey ten years ago. Makes her an expert she thinks, “It’s always someone they know. That’s a fact .”

Finally, after a lot of shrugging and squirming young Nettle mumbled that she had hitched a ride.

“Who with?”

Mumble.

“Who?”

“Stan.”

“But why didn’t he bring you home? It’s on his way. You must have said something to annoy him. As though we haven’t got enough . . .” Stan’s mother gloomed at her niece.

Mumble.

“Stan put the hard word on you, Nettle?” I asked. Nobody else was going to.

Mumble.

Turned out Stan had offered Nettle a ride home but he had stopped on the way, expecting a bit of passion in payment. Nettle said he’d pinned her against the car door. When she managed to land a knee in his tender parts he’d taken off.

“I saw the Capri turn out of Camp Road. ” I said.

“I was going to walk to Featherston but he,” shrugging at me, “offered me a lift.”

Joe came out to the ute with me, looking embarrassed. Myrtle had a lot on her plate with the old man dying and everyone would be coming for the funeral. Myrtle didn’t apologise and Daphne was still muttering about no smoke without fire.

The district gave old McKinley a good send off. I went to the funeral, but not the bun fight afterwards. The paper wrote a decent obituary. Born 1901, enlisted at fifteen, fought at Passchendale , took up a soldier’s farm, served on the County Council twice. There were two photographs, one of Arch, in his wheel chair last Anzac Day. The other been taken on his final leave. Good looking youngster, slouch hat pushed back, happy smile.

Stan Rodman’s in hospital. The Fire Brigade pulled his father’s Capri out of the lake. The boy kept babbling about having to swerve because of ‘a bloke on a horse.’

I took the Ute to the garage. It was running rough and I didn’t want it stalling at the funeral. Mark climbed on to the bumper to look under the bonnet.

“Where’ve you been, Jack?” he asked, “Look at this.”

Now I drive a lot of back roads, but there’s no way I can explain the horse droppings Mark hosed off the engine before he fixed the ute.

GODWIT & GLOWWORM

GODWIT & GLOWWORM

A SHORT STORY THAT NOBODY WANTS TO PUBLISH


Tena koto,
tena koto,
tena koto katoa.

My name is Jennifer Tohoro.

You did see me in Shortland Street a couple of times,
unless you blinked.

My tribe is Ngati Pahone.
My mountain is Puketama,
my lake, Wairima.

There is an Italian war bride, an Irish whaler plus various traders and sealers in my whakapapa, but only the Maori bit counts, so Matiu Waireti says.
He ignores those traders and sealers, although I suspect there are more of them than genetically unmodified Maori in his whakapapa which he can recite all the way back to Tama.
He does that frequently whenever he wants to stall something on the marae. He has been our Komatua all my life.
My mother and sister still live in Wairima.
Bella has a state house in the Rikihana Block with her husband Jason, and their six boys. Five years ago David and I spent Christmas with them.

Bella put her boys to sleep in the garage to make room for us. When some prowling hohas from down the road tried to pinch Bella’s Toyota out of the drive the boys rushed out at them with garden forks and grubbers.

Some nosey parker rang the cops. They called Family Protection because of the boys sleeping in the garage. Bella’s husband went spare.
“In Ruatahuna us kids slept on the veranda all year. What the fuck’s wrong with sleeping in a garage?”

The social worker kept talking in her tight ass voice about ‘finding appropriate shelter for the boys until she could arrange a group family conference,’ so David and I solved her problems by leaving town.

Unfortunately the media picked up the police report and next day there were headlines,

’ACTORS IN GANG BRAWL'.

And they printed a picture of me and not him, so we parted and now David is running a phone in programme in Invercargill.

I started using my qualifications instead of my looks and for the last three years I have been an auditor for Sheldon Developments in Sydney.Yesterday morning my boss called me into his office, sixteen floors above Sydney’s traffic jams.

He told me Ngati Pahone wanted to borrow more money to make a film like “Whale Rider.” What did I think?

Eight years ago Ngati Pahone signed a joint venture with Sheldon Investments which should have turned Wairima into a resort like Queenstown with a luxury hotel, a golf course, a fifty berth marina.

The vision had been magnificent, income from tourists and jobs for young Pahone.

Reality was complaints about poor service, sloppy maintenance, overpricing and very little money paid back.
“What’s going on, Jen?” demanded my boss.

Probably Matiu wanted to buy a new race horse, or something, but I couldn’t say that out loud. Finally my boss told me to get myself (he actually said ‘get your butt.’) over to Wairima and have a sniff around before the Sheldon financial advisers arrived on Monday.

On the plane I read through the file. What should have been a wonderful vision was a mess, full of excuses, and evasions.

Why had Sheldon lent so much to Ngati Pahone?

At the bottom of the file I found the reason. Matiu had mortgaged our tribal land. If Sheldon called in their loans the tribe would lose everything. I could have wept.

Also in my file was a fax from Te Ariki Sheldon. I was booked into the
Waitama suite for three nights and would be met by the hotel’s Ford Ghia courtesy car at Wairima Airport.

When I arrived there was only Uncle Koro and his battered shuttle bus. He made a lot of cracks about ‘Ngati Kangaru’ before grabbing my suitcase.

“You sit up front here, with me,” he ordered. “I’ll just drop this lady and gentleman in town. You stopping at Bella’s?”
“No, I’m not,” I told Koro. “I’m booked into the Sheldon.” He wasn’t pleased. He had to drive back around the lake, but he should have asked first, eh.

Te Ariki Sheldon, gave a nod towards Maori in the carved fascia boards at the entrance, but it was more Hong Kong Tudor, plaster board and lathe strips. There was a fibreglass copy of our whare runanga ridgepole, in the lobby. Our ancestors are there all right, standing on each other’s shoulders from floor to roof, but their genitals have been removed.

How they begat each other in that condition I can’t imagine.

The receptionist, not Sheldon trained, not even Kiwi Host, said her computer had no record of my reservation. She told me the hotel was fully booked.

Five years ago she would have been all over me because I was on TV five nights a week. Immortality surely is ephemeral. I waved the fax under her nose. She consigned me to a small room near the kitchens,
no phone,
no bath,
only a shower.

AND she demanded payment in advance and five dollars for the key.

“This’ll do in the meantime,” I told her, “But I am booked in to the Waitama suite.
I expect to sleep in the room reserved for me.”

The receptionist shrugged.

Dinner was unmemorable. I had to ask twice for a carafe of water. The house wine was drinkable, but only just; the coffee lukewarm; the receptionist had still not found my booking.

“I’m going for a walk,” I told her. “Please have the Waitama suite ready when I get back.”

I saw her reflection in the glass doors as I walked across the lobby.
“Careful,” I called from the door, “If the wind changes you’ll stay like that.”

The hotel site had been a camping ground years ago. Poppa took us there for fishing holidays. Up the hill stood the last patch of virgin forest in the district, rimu, smelling dark and cool, full of quiet noises from pigeons and fantails.
I decided to explore the old tracks, see if glow worms still set tiny points of light along the path from hilltop to lake.

The parking bay and the gate at the entrance to the grove were new. So was the green board advertising
‘Rimu Grove, Glow Worm Trail, Admission $5. '

People were climbing on to a tourist bus as the thug who called himself a warden tried to stop me going in to the grove. Eventually I paid, demanded a receipt.

He couldn’t give me one, kept staring at my cleavage, so I looked at his fly until he turned away and I walked into the grove, furious about being charged to walk on my own tribal land.

And now I couldn’t remember the path.

I wandered along, literally lost in thought about Ngati Pahone, trying to work out why the Trust was not keeping its agreements. The hotel said it was booked out yet there was an air of slackness.

The bed in my room felt damp, as though it had been made up weeks before. Dead leaves had blown into the corners of the hotel entrance, the garden was unkempt with dead roses.

At any other Sheldon Hotel the chef would have been fired.

I found a bench along the path and sat down to take my bearings. It was getting dark beneath the trees.

“Tena koe, Jennifer Tohoro.”

At first I thought it was the ‘warden’ but this man was shorter, hair tied in a knot. I caught a glimpse of full moko and white teeth. He spoke in a surprisingly quiet voice.

“Welcome home. You lost your way?”

“Not exactly. I came to see the glow worms, but I missed the track.”

“Ah, follow me. I will show you.”

We walked from the trees on to a rough path. Although it was now dark my guide set his feet surely. He stopped where the path fell away between two shingle banks.

“Look,”

To the west Wairima’s street lights shone like gold sequins on black velvet. Above me familiar constellations wheeled across the sky. Around my feet more stars glowed in the darkness. I felt as though I was far out in space. I forgot to keep silent,

“Oh!” I breathed and the glow worms blinked off.

“Sorry,” I said. The man laughed.

“Ngati Pahone settled here because if anything bigger than a weka moved the glow worms stopped shining. It was a good warning system. Now tell me, what has brought you winging home like a godwit?”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to tell this man too much. He might be one of Matiu’s grandsons, finding out why someone from Sheldon Developments was nosing about.

The man’s voice was so quiet it did not affect the glow worms.

“Let me put it this way, Jennifer Tohoro, Matiu Wareti is chairman of Ngati Pahone Trust Board. He signed a joint agreement with Sheldon to build a world class leisure complex but now the money has run out.”

“Sheldon put twelve million into that venture,” I protested. “It was such a great deal, tourism for the area and employment for the young people.”

“True, but old Matiu likes cards and horses. He has also signed a joint venture with Mioro Japan to build the golf course and another corporation in America for the Marina. Five different consortiums have a claim to Ngati Pahone land, and now Matiu’s fish are beginning to stink. Whenever the auditors get too curious he holds a hui on the marae and throws pumice in their eyes. But eventually he will run out of excuses and the land will be forfeit.”

“The auditors from Sheldon Development are coming here next week and they will insist on seeing the books AND the meeting is scheduled for the conference room at the hotel. He won’t be able to pull his marae tricks there. They are very tough people these Aussies.”

“And over the week end something will happen to the conference room. The roof might leak or there will be a fire and everyone will have to go to the Marae. You know how things are run there.”

I certainly did.

I remembered Bella and me helping Mum and Aunty Matty in the antiquated kitchens of the Dining Hall. Out on the Marae Matiu and his mates strutted about, waving their staffs, talking on and on.

Mum would straighten up, sweat running from her face,

“Why doesn’t the old bugger shut up!” she would say, “We’re supposed to be planning a kohanga reo and they’re going on and on about the bloody Maori battalion.”

She and Aunty Matty would stump out singing a waiata about bringing the language to children. Sometimes the women among te Manuhire would join in but once the song finished another old warrior would get up and start ranting again.

“That old fox is robbing us,” I told the man beside me.

The glow worms winked out again.

Whatever money Matiu Wareti creamed off certainly did not reach the tribe. Bella has been waiting years for a piece of land to build a proper house. There had been no dividend for the Tribe since 2008.

Matiu said it was because profits had to pay off the loan from Sheldon Development; all lies.

And if this man beside me was telling the truth, when Sheldon Developments blew the whistle on Matiu’s shenanigans Mioro Japan and American Marinas would come demanding their money back.

Then Ngati Pahone land would be forfeit to the corporations.

“That’s it, Jennifer Tohoro. We must hold the land.”

Funny how this stranger knew what I was thinking.

“That’s why you have been called back here. To help Ngati Pahone hold its land.”

“Me?” I almost squeaked. “What can I do?”

“Matiu must stand down.”

“He won’t. He’s the komatua. He’ll brazen it out.”

In the starlight my companion’s teeth flashed as he laughed.

“Remember Tama’s battle with Te Ngongo?”

“Of course. Tama was outnumbered three to one so he tied cloaks around flax bushes and pretended they were warriors. Te Ngongo got such a shock he retreated.”

“You have been well taught, Jennifer Tohoro.

Now, suppose on Monday morning, before the hui, you show Matiu that you have the numbers to make him stand down. Not just a couple of Ngati Kangaru with goldrims and briefcases, but all the local people and some Asians.
At least one hundred people on the lawn in front of the hotel on Monday morning, Jennifer Tohoro. Can you do it?”

I counted in my head. Bella and her six,
her neighbours and their kids,
Aunty Matty and her friends from the church,
the kids I’d gone to school with.

If I rang David he could put out a call to all Ngati Pahone

BE HERE BY MONDAY MORNING
“So he’d think he was outnumbered. And I could tell him that every time he started talking anything except balance sheets and tribal funds I’d start a waiata about the tribe’s treasures being squandered.”

“More than that, Jennifer Tohoro. Call his bluff. Challenge him.”
“I couldn’t. You know that.”

A woman, challenging the komatua? Unthinkable.

“It’s time you did. Matiu’s got away with too much for too long.
It’s time for a real accounting. And there’s no one else brave enough.”

Brave? I felt as though he was telling me to step out into that black space between starlight and glow worms.

We walked back to the gate of the rimu grove. The hotel gleamed down on the lake shore. Mists crept across the garden, wrapping around koromiko and flax.

They looked like cloaked figures, implacable, waiting.

“Come back and see me on Monday evening. I will be interested to hear who will chair the new Tribal Trust.”

“Why not come down then, see for yourself?”

“I might. But I doubt if you would notice me. No, Jennifer Tohoro. I am like the glow worms, my place is here, looking after the land.”

He took my hand. He was so short I had to bend over as we hongied, but his eyes were bright as a kereru’s.

I strode down the road, towards the hotel and suddenly, for no reason, I felt incredibly brave.