Part two of an epic short story by J Wiremu Kane
Hāngī (earth oven)
‘Here.’ The cop gave a hesitant smile. ‘I’ll help you with that.’
‘Oh.’ Rua hoped his cheeks weren’t as pink as they felt. ‘Thanks.’
They each took a handle of the heavy wire basket lined with the thick outer leaves of the cabbages. The predawn light was grey. Rain drizzled just enough to catch on glasses and in irritating hollows while stirring the dusty ground to mud. The valley was blanketed in cloud that rolled up and down the steep-sided hills like enormous breaths.
‘I don’t think I caught your name,’ Rua said.
‘I’m Nick.’
They added their basket to the pile next to the pit and a stack of wood draped in scratchy blue tarpaulins.
The rain would probably find a way in, Rua thought. It always did. He wiped sweat and rain drops off his forehead. His ankles stung where mud clung to them.
They joined the group of men clustered under a makeshift shelter of canvas and bamboo poles.
‘Once the fire catches it’ll be tino pai,’ Kotahi said.
‘You still use river stones?’ someone asked, inspecting the rocks stacked under the wood. ‘I could’ve brought up some railway irons if you’d said.’
‘Our koro probably laid those railway irons,’ Rua said.
‘Stones have done us for thousands of years,’ Bernie said. ‘We ready to light this thing?’
Rua watched the flames while seated on a round of a log. They’d been up until the small hours prepping the baskets. His eyes were itchy, the lids sore and swollen even before a gust of woodsmoke swirled into his face. He sipped black coffee with too much sugar from an Arcoroc mug.
‘I’ve never put down a hāngī before.’ Nick pulled up a log and sat next to Rua.
‘Did someone make you coffee? Or tea?’ Rua asked. ‘Milo?’
‘Yes they did. Everyone is taking especially good care of me. It’s almost making me feel bad.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’
Rua rubbed his eyes. The stinging only worsened. The smoke hung at head level and seemed annoyed that the rain was stopping it from drifting away.
Nick shuffled closer to Rua. ‘I was gonna go for a bit of a drive after this,’ he said, looking into the fire. ‘Try and find some reception.’
‘Okay.’
Nick kept his eyes fixed on the fire. ‘You could come with me. If you want.’
‘There are breakfast dishes . . .’
‘The MPs are supposed to get here soon.’ Kotahi pushed Rua aside to make room for himself on the log. ‘And cameras from Māori TV and Te Karere. You know they want footage of MPs with their hands in the sink.’ He clapped a hand on Rua’s shoulder. ‘Show the cop around our beautiful whenua.’
Rua felt the stirrings of a dry retch. ‘I –’
A crack like a gunshot split the air. Rua froze, expecting to feel the white-hot pain of a bullet somewhere. Nick leapt to his feet, hand at his hip where a holster might be. Every dog in the valley started barking.
‘What was that?’ Rua heard Sian calling from the kitchen door.
Bernie moved as close to the fire as he could, holding a long-handled rake with steel teeth. He scraped at the side of the fire and out rolled two pieces of a stone that had cracked almost perfectly in half.
To Rua it looked like a hatched taniwha egg. He half expected a slippery, scaled creature to emerge and burrow a muddy channel down to the tidal mudflats and into the Waihou.
‘You don’t get that with railway irons,’ someone muttered.
Rua was asleep before they left the valley. Fitful sleep that tasted of smoke and mud and felt stuffy despite the car’s air conditioning. He woke dry-mouthed and confused, and the sun and water felt in the wrong direction. Through the fogged-up windscreen, he saw the sprawl of the fancy hotel and, beyond the massive yellow pyramid of the north head, a narrow wharf reaching out towards it.
‘I didn’t mean to wake you,’ Nick said. ‘I wasn’t going to stop, but . . .’ He gestured at the harbour mouth and the Tasman beyond. ‘We ran out of road.’ He looked at his phone. ‘Give me a few minutes, I need to make a call.’
The rain had stopped. Rua got out of the car to let Nick make his call. Steam rose from the wooden planks of the wharf. The Tasman stretched forever, churned up grey with layer after layer of white foam under towering clouds.
Not the Tasman, Rua reminded himself. Te Tai-o-Rēhua. Tasman was some Dutch goon who so grossly underestimated the size of the Pacific he thought he’d hit the bottom of South America. Rēhua was Antares, the god star, the star of summer. Rēhua meant long days and humid nights full of the drone of cicadas and crickets. Rēhua meant January.
Nick finished his call and joined Rua.
‘All good?’ Rua asked, seeing Nick’s drawn face.
‘Yeah.’ Nick’s voice was distant. ‘Just work stuff.’
‘Work stuff,’ Rua echoed. Cop stuff. His stomach gurgled again.
They walked past a small group of tourists in the hotel carpark, snapping photos of the clouds over the dunes. Rua tried to keep his breathing slow and even as they crossed the road and stepped onto the wharf.
‘A taniwha lives here,’ he said, pointing to the south head. ‘Āraiteuru. She had eleven sons and each of them carved out an arm of the Hokianga. Waihou, her strongest son, he smashed his way inland through the cliffs and burrowed out the channel, throwing up the hills to each side. He made our valley and came to rest at Lake Omapere. His brothers carved out the shorter arms. Waimā, Orira, Mangamuka, Ohopa, Wairere . . .’
‘I don’t know any of my stories,’ Nick said.
‘Where are you from?’
‘The East Coast.’
‘Ngāti Porou territory? Then you have stories, you have the whale rider.’ Rua took a deep breath and beat his chest with his palms. ‘Uia mai koia,’ he sang, ‘whakahuatia ake, ko wai te whare nei e? KO TE KANI! Ko wai te tekoteko kei runga? Ko Paikea! Ko Paikea! HEI!’
The Pākehā tourists had joined them on the wharf. They looked over at Rua and applauded. He felt his cheeks grow warm.
‘I like singing,’ he said, hoping he didn’t sound too defensive.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Nick said. For a second Rua thought he was going to take his hand. He looked down at the swirling water through the gaps in the plank. When he raised his eyes again, Nick had turned back towards the shoreline.
‘Tell me another story,’ Nick said as he fished in his pocket for his car keys.
Don’t, a part of Rua warned, but he was already speaking. ‘Once there was a boy,’ he began, ‘who had the singularly useless magic power of hearing the words people wouldn’t say out loud. At school he enjoyed the praise he received at first. Bright, articulate, a real credit to his family. Until he heard the rest of the words. Bright and articulate . . . for a Māori. What a credit . . . to his working-class, Māori roots. This one’s a smart one, he might finish high school or even go to uni. He also heard other things people would never say to his face. Words he didn’t understand and an identity that adults seemed intent on thrusting on him.
‘When he was seventeen and still trying to figure himself out, he made the mistake of attending a party in the rural Waikato. There, some friends of friends took exception to the way the boy dressed or spoke or carried himself.
‘Later, the boy, mostly physically unharmed due to luck rather than mercy, went to the police to report his own attempted murder. The officers were . . . bored? Unimpressed. Maybe a little amused. And as the downhearted boy left, he heard the words not said out loud.
‘What did the little faggot expect, showing up looking like that? Asking for it.’
Rua didn’t want to meet Nick’s eyes. He focused on the lower part of his face instead.
‘I don’t . . . I don’t know how you want me to respond to that,’ Nick said, rubbing his chin. It was clean shaven. Rua had liked his post-lockdown scrubby beard.
‘Honestly, I guess,’ Rua said.
‘Honestly?’ Nick paused. He looked inland towards the low hills. The rain was rolling down the harbour in a wall of blurry grey and white. The sun would probably already be out again back in the valley. ‘It was a little close to home,’ he said at last. ‘I remember the praise. The desire to please. Wanting to be the good Māori.’
Rua had been on the verge of apologising. Instead, he felt his irritation rising. ‘That’s all?’
‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’ Nick looked down at the ground. ‘You’re angry with me.’
‘A little.’
‘For what? For being a detective?’
‘For being . . . here.’ Rua regretted the words instantly. Nick’s face seemed designed to display hurt – his wide-set eyes, his naturally downturned mouth. ‘Sorry, that was –’
‘I get it. This is supposed to be your safe space.’
On the car ride back they drove through the shower and out the other side. Rua watched the clouds roll out to the coast, leaving the hills steaming. He wanted to say something to Nick. The way Nick’s lips trembled and opened noiselessly, he thought Nick wanted to say something too. But they were both silent.
Takahi whare (tramp the house)
Sian’s weariness hit all at once and her legs nearly gave out from under her. The hāngī was down, the last shovelful of soil patted flat.
‘Have a rest,’ Auntie Maia said. ‘You’ve done Kuini proud, no one will go hungry.’ She leaned in and kissed Sian’s cheek. She smelled clean and somehow kind. ‘You’ve done Ronnie proud, too.’
Sian didn’t know how to respond to that. She smiled as her eyes pricked. ‘Just one last thing to take care of.’
Her phone didn’t start beeping until she was almost back on State Highway 1. She pulled over and called Linney.
‘Sian! I wasn’t expecting to hear from you until tomorrow. Is everything okay?’
‘Yeah,’ Sian said. ‘I just needed a little drive. The hāngī is down.’
‘Great, that must be a relief. How is everyone?’
‘Good.’ She paused. ‘That cop is here.’
‘The cop from last week?’
‘Yeah.’ She chose her words carefully. ‘Don’t worry, turns out we’re only related by marriage.’
Linney gave a short laugh. ‘I’m not the sort of person cops ever worry.’
Sian rubbed her eyes. They stung with tiredness. ‘Everything fine at the café?’
‘Perfectly so. Get some rest, babe.’
*
‘Where are we going?’ Sian had asked as she climbed into Linney’s car. It had just struck midnight and level 3 lockdown had ended.
‘To do something naughty.’ Linney refused to say anything more.
The checkpoints on the way out of town were gone at last. The traffic was still sparse. Sian soon figured out where they were going.
‘Linney!’
‘It’ll be fine,’ Linney said. ‘No one has been there since March and you know where Debbie hid the spare key, right?’
The car bumped along the pitted gravel driveway. Linney made Sian wait in the car while she climbed out and opened the heavy wooden gate. Sian half expected to see Debbie standing on the front porch, glaring at the intruders, but of course the house was empty. Debbie was trapped in Sydney with her sister and had been since March.
Debbie . . .
‘She’s much more comfortable here at home,’ Debbie had said. What Debbie had really meant was she was comfortable in the stifling old homestead, too far out of town for casual visitors to drop by. Where heavy fabric draped everything in jewel tones, pigeon-blood red curtains, midnight blue quilts over dazzling white sheets and the pink crocheted hat pulled down to cover sparse hair.
Sian had never felt at home there, and Debbie loved to encourage that feeling. From the heavy-framed wedding photo with Sian’s face turned away from the camera, to the low tables she enjoyed perching herself on, daring Sian to say anything.
It had got worse at the end. Debbie had been horrified at Sian’s suggestion she stay with her wife. She had even put a wrinkled hand to her mouth in a show of disgust.
‘No! I can’t have you sleeping in here. It wouldn’t be . . . comfortable.’
‘I can sleep in a chair,’ Sian said. ‘Or even on the floor. Honestly, anywhere is fine.’
‘The Airbnb is only fifteen minutes away.’ Debbie reached out to pat Sian’s hand. Sian was tempted to rip it away. ‘She’ll still be here in the morning.’
Sian had squeezed Ronnie’s hand and felt the struggle of her pulse, slowed by morphine and midazolam. She wouldn’t still be there in the morning. Sian wasn’t sure how she’d known.
Debbie had barely spoken to Sian after the small, non-denominational funeral service. Sian knew she should resent the slight, but all she had felt was relief.
The house felt happy to be open again. Linney had brought a chisel and they pried open every window that had been painted shut. Sian oiled the hinges on the fanlight windows above the bed Ronnie had died in and wrenched them open for the first time in years. They drew back every heavy drape and the lace curtains underneath. They propped open every door and let the winter air swirl into every dusty corner.
They didn’t have anyone else with them, so they tramped out the house together, just the two of them. They stamped their feet until Sian’s hips throbbed, and the soles of her feet were numb. They shook loose every speck of dust with their stamping and drove out anything that needed to be set free.
Sian ripped layer after layer of bedclothes from the big old bed until just the fitted sheet remained. They sprawled across it and smoked a joint, watching the smoke rise and then get suddenly sucked out through the fanlights.
Sian cried into the pillows, her face, jaw and neck aching from the sobs while Linney pretended not to notice.
Before dawn, Linney closed all the windows and pulled the drapes back across. Sian remade the bed for the final time. Any remaining weed smell had dissipated, and the close smell of potpourri was returning. Sian was sure she’d got the order of the bedclothes wrong.
‘What’ll we do if Debbie says something?’
Linney’s car rumbled down the gravel driveway.
‘She won’t. And if she does, you’ll deny all knowledge. Right?’
Sian nodded. ‘Right.’
Pōhatu (stone)
Rua trudged down the paddock towards the mangroves, the two halves of the broken hāngī stone tucked under his arm. Despite the almost carnival atmosphere of the night before, there was a tired, heavy feeling over the marae on day three of the tangi. People were starting to feel how long they’d been away from their homes, their jobs. The little valley felt overstuffed with people and their feelings.
They were to bury Kuini that afternoon. Tents were already being dismantled, empty beer cans and wine bottles smuggled into recycling bins with sheepish looks at the Mormon contingent.
Below the ridge the whare was built on, the ground fell away suddenly down towards the creeping wetlands. A boardwalk snaked through the overgrown mangroves. Rua walked along it, feeling the rough boards under his cracked heels. He needed to raid his mother’s tent for moisturiser.
Then the smell of cigarette smoke hit him, sharp against the salt, mud and evaporating water. ‘Of course,’ he muttered as he spotted Nick sitting on the edge of the boardwalk, exhaling smoke.
‘You got weed?’ Nick asked as Rua approached. ‘I hear this is where people sneak off to smoke.’
‘Is this entrapment?’
Nick shrugged. ‘I’m not very good at it if it is.’
Rua sat down and handed Nick his vape. His feet dangled above the mangrove roots, which poked out of the mud like alien fingers.
‘Cheers.’
‘I guess I wanted you to appreciate,’ Rua said, as if they were still mid-conversation, ‘just how . . . vulnerable I feel around cops. How exposed. Being Māori. And queer. And having . . . multiple mental illnesses. And enjoying weed.’
‘Yeah,’ Nick said. ‘I think I get it.’
Rua felt his stomach twisting. He forced himself to speak.
‘Are you here because of Sian and that dead creep?’
Nick didn’t answer right away. Rua’s stomach clenched. He took the vape and inhaled.
‘I’m here,’ Nick said at last, ‘to pay my respects to Kuini, just like everyone else. But, when I told my boss where I was going and who would be here, he asked . . . he asked if I would just . . . keep an eye out.’
Rua had been expecting the answer, but was surprised at how quickly he felt his heart speed up. Blood thundered in his ears and temples. He was glad he was sitting down already.
‘And you told your boss,’ he said, struggling to keep his voice even, ‘that a marae is a sacred space. That tangihanga is one of the only rites we have left that colonisation hasn’t forced its way into.’ His voice was rising. ‘And that anyone even remotely culturally competent should know that.’
‘I mean, I know that now –’
‘I’m trying so hard to not hate you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Nick said. ‘I really am. I . . . you’re, what, thirty?’
‘I’m thirty-three.’
‘I’m going to be forty-one this year.’ Nick seemed to sag as he spoke. ‘It was different then. Being Māori was something I was always taught to be ashamed of. And all anyone would tell me was that being gay meant you would get AIDS and die, and I couldn’t, so I couldn’t be . . .’ His breathing was ragged. ‘I had no one to look up to, no one to confide in, I had . . . I had no one.’
‘Nick, it’s –’
‘I had no one. I have no one, I have –’
‘Breathe,’ Rua said. ‘Bring your knees up, head down and just breathe. Nice and even. Watch me and follow my breathing. In and out. Nice and even.’
Nick’s breathing gradually slowed. All the colour had drained from his face.
Rua draped an arm around his shoulders. ‘Better?’
Nick nodded. ‘It gets worse,’ he said. ‘My boss . . . he wanted me to keep an eye on, on you too.’
‘Me?’ A humourless laugh escaped Rua’s mouth. ‘Why me? Because of that stupid fake Facebook account?’
Nick’s eyes widened. ‘You’re Niho Maunene?’
‘Sian didn’t tell you that?’
‘No, she didn’t. And before I got here I didn’t know that you were Rua. I just thought of you as “CanHost”.’ He shook his head. ‘You really wrote all those things? You don’t even live there!’
‘I went over for the big counter-protest Sian helped organise,’ Rua said. ‘I put it together from a bunch of comments from the town hall meeting.’
‘You compared anti-abortion protesters to the last bit of shit you can’t squeeze out!’
Rua took a deep inhale on his vape. ‘I was joking!’
‘You said they deserved to be –’
‘I was being dramatic. I thought that was obvious. I don’t want to hurt anyone. Ever. I . . . If you didn’t know I was Niho Maunene, then why me?’
‘We had a list of people that attended the counter-protest.’
‘Oh.’ Rua’s jaw clenched. ‘And you saw the names Eruera and Matawhaorua and figured there are your murderers?’
‘Not me,’ Nick said. He turned away from Rua and let out a long sigh. Rua looked down at the mud. A crab crawled out of a hole, shuffled sideways and vanished into another.
‘You can tell Sian it’s all over anyway,’ Nick said. ‘The coroner has ruled it an accidental death.’ He let out a long sigh. ‘The only reason we investigated as thoroughly as we did was because those Speaking for the Voiceless arseholes were pressuring my boss. Their leader was sure that whoever was behind the Niho Maunene account had smashed his mate’s head in.’
Nick seemed to notice the broken stones sitting on the boards next to them for the first time. ‘Why are you carrying rocks around?’
‘It’s the hāngī stone that split yesterday,’ Rua said. He picked up one of the halves and turned it over in his hand. ‘I wanted to make sure it doesn’t get used again by mistake.’
He stood up. With an exaggerated pivot, he hoisted the stone to his shoulder like a shot put and hurled it out into the mangroves. It crashed through some branches and landed with a splat. A white-faced heron rose from the trees in slow-motion and threw Rua a look of disgust before flapping away, its neck hunched into its chest.
‘Sorry!’ Rua called after the departing bird.
Nick looked down at the mud. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said.
‘You’ll figure it out. If you could do something about the way your buddies target brown people, that might be a good start.’
‘Yeah, that’ll keep me busy, for sure.’ He gave a shy smile. ‘And what about us?’
‘I dunno,’ Rua said. ‘Friends? Even though I’ll get so much shit about it from my radical, cop-hating mates.’
‘E hoa, that’s friend, right?’
‘Yeah. E hoa.’
‘I’m learning.’
Nick stood and picked up the other half of the stone. He pitched it like a softball player. It flew out past the mangroves and landed in the creek with a satisfying plop.
Kāti i konei (end it here)
The car rattled at a frequency that made the bones in Sian’s face ache. Rua was driving and on a whim had taken the narrow road of scuffed metal that wound up the valley rather than the sealed route.
‘I haven’t been this way in forever,’ he said. ‘And you know, it’s the one part of the world where we’re not . . . not on someone else’s whenua. You know?’
‘I know.’
Neither had wanted to stay for the poroporoaki. They had both reached their limit of speeches and interacting with whānau. Sian had long grown tired of the silent aren’t you doing well nods and sorry for your loss cheek kisses.
Rua tapped his rough fingers on the steering wheel and sang to himself. ‘Ki ngā ringawera, tino papai ngā kai . . . is it ngā kai? Or te kai? I’ve heard it both ways.’
‘So have I,’ said Sian. Rua seemed happier since talking to Nick. She hadn’t noticed him dry-retch in days. ‘You really think your cop isn’t beyond redemption?’
‘He’s not my cop,’ Rua said. ‘And I hope so. He seems to want to try.’
‘Sure,’ Sian said. ‘Maybe he’ll be the one person to successfully bring down the master’s house with the master’s tools.’
Rua shrugged. ‘We all tried,’ he said. ‘He already called me out for judging people not as far along their journey as we are. I’m trying to be . . . nice.’
*
Sian usually allowed herself one joint at the end of the day. It helped her sleep after a day of paper-thin cartilage grinding on bone as her upper body balanced on her hips. She had just finished rolling it when she heard a frantic knock.
Linney burst through the back door before Sian could stand, her eyes wild, her cheeks flushed.
‘Sian! I think . . . I think I did something. I did something bad.’
‘How bad?’
Linney’s face was answer enough. Sian stood and guided her to the couch.
‘Are you hurt?’
Linney shook her head. Sian lit the joint and handed it to her. Linney inhaled deeply and remembered to aim her stream of smoke out the open window. Sian took a cautious puff herself, enough to dull her cramping muscles but not enough to cloud her mind.
‘Tell me what happened,’ she said. ‘Exactly what happened.’
Linney took several deep breaths before finally speaking.
‘It was stuffy at home, and I was restless,’ she said. ‘I thought a walk would help. I got to the bridge and stopped to look at the ducks.’
Sian could picture it. Linney leaning on the curved metal rail of the bridge, watching the family of ducks that had taken up residence in the creek, bumping and bobbing in the water as they slept.
Linney wouldn’t meet Sian’s eyes. ‘Someone else was there, standing too still and quiet. I didn’t see him until he moved. I asked if he was okay and he said . . . he said I’d kill my babies, that I’d told him I would kill as many of my babies as I wanted.’
‘What?’
‘It was one of the anti-abortion guys. One of the ones we had to stop coming into the café.’
Sian’s fragmented thoughts were beginning to settle and arrange themselves. Linney’s words were starting to make sense. Sian remembered something Rua had written on the community Facebook page as his wrathful alter ego.
I worry for the people in these men’s lives. If they’re willing to display such open misogyny in public, how do they treat women in private?
‘Did he touch you?’
Linney nodded.
If they think outside a hospital is a good place to show how little they care for the bodily autonomy of others, what harm do they do when no one can see them?
‘Oh, honey –’
‘Just my arm,’ she said. ‘But . . . but it scared me. I shook him off easily enough, but he was blocking the path. I needed to push past him, or turn my back on him to go back and I . . . I didn’t know what to do.’
Sian felt her chest tightening.
‘I picked up a stone and . . . and I told him, If you touch me again, I’ll . . . I’ll fucking kill you.’
Linney reached out for Sian’s hand and Sian let her take it.
‘Did he touch you again?’ she asked.
Linney wouldn’t look at her.
‘Yes,’ she said.
Sian took another drag on the joint, trying to slow the racing of her thoughts. She was surprised by how calm she felt.
‘The stone,’ Sian said, squeezing Linney’s hand. ‘Think carefully. What did you do with the stone?’
Linney shut her eyes. ‘I didn’t drop it right away.’ Her voice now had a dreamy quality. Sian moved the pāua shell ashtray holding the half-smoked joint to the far side of the coffee table. ‘But I didn’t have it at the corner by the Murphys’ place, because I checked my hands under the streetlight there. For blood.’ She opened her eyes and looked imploringly at Sian. ‘There wasn’t any. I barely touched him! He tripped . . .’
‘Stay here. I’ll be back in two minutes.’
Sian dragged herself to her feet. She slipped on the pair of jandals she kept at the back door and hobbled down to where the back gate opened onto Ārani Road. She shuffled along the footpath, her eyes straining for the glint of light on wet stone.
Sian found the river stone on the grass verge outside the Murphys’ house. She felt almost light on her feet as she scooped it up, turned and jogged back to the house, her hip joints groaning in protest.
Linney hadn’t moved from her spot on the couch. She looked up at Sian, her lip trembling.
Sian gave a short nod.
‘Have a shower, go to bed. Nothing happened.’
‘But what if . . .’
‘Deny all knowledge, right?’
Linney rubbed her eyes and nodded. ‘But what will you do with it? With the stone?’
Sian shook her head.
‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll think of something.’ "Ringawera" by J Wiremu Kane is taken from Middle Distance: Long stories of Aoetearoa New Zealand edited by Craig Gamble (Victoria University Press, $35), featuring the work of Maria Samuela, Jack Barrowman, David Geary, Vincent O'Sullivan and other writers.
