Jake's Long Shadow (14 page)

So Ape knew his transfer was approved.

Mrs Hudson leaned forward, hardly able to disguise her approving smile. Just give us an undertaking, Montgomery, that you would take part in these Maori cultural classes, given we were unanimous in approving your transfer to Christchurch prison. A silent please deafening to Apeman’s ears.

Again he pretended to give it serious consideration, then he nodded. I guess I could. Be part of the new person I’m determined to become, Mrs Hudson. What with my daughter and partner down there able to visit me.

Richmond thanked Ape on the committee’s behalf. Pora gave a closing prayer in Maori. Ape calculated another fifteen bucks Pora’s way. And Sarah Hudson told Montgomery Black with her eyes that his transfer request was a done deal.

HE WAS ALL over Sharns from the moment he locked eyes with her across the (seedy) bar. Average height, handsome part-Polynesian, all flowing movement, those intense eyes that say fight and screw, either will do. And Sharns feeling her heat rising. Well, why not?

The courting game was their own here at Jojo’s. A guy gave a woman the eye, and unless he was held in low regard by his male peers she was expected to give it back if she wasn’t spoken for. No talk of equality here. You could be out in the back of a guy’s car within minutes of meeting, or doing it in the toilets, men’s or ladies it didn’t matter, because that was the way you connected, since you lacked words and concepts to exchange and investigate each other to any depth. No relationship could afford the luxury of complexity, and if you had a mind, if you owned sensibilities, what then were you doing in a joint like this?

The sex was always urgent. Everything was, even borrowing twenty bucks from someone: you had to have it that instant. And spend it in a
stretched-out instant of several hours on drink. Everyone was urgent over a personal matter in need of resolution: booze, drugs and love, or rent arrears, debts and soured friendships. Whatever. Same old same old.

Over he came, glancing back at his mates throwing remarks at him, impossible to tell what with the jukebox going and the tortured, mostly brown, souls right by the coloured light machine, transporting them to other places their hearts thought they were, but minds knew otherwise, as they sang along with a song, thick with sentiment, oozing emotion on a catchy melody. But okay here in Jojo’s, most anything was.

His name was Leti. A Samoan, born in New Zealand but prouder to be Islander, even though he spoke English like a white Kiwi. You with anyone?

Nope, can’t say I am. Not t’night. You?

Not for quite a few nights. What’d you say your name was?

Is.

Hi, Is.

Very funny. It’s Sharneeta.

Is Sharneeta, my true Samoan cuzzies would shay.

Which got Sharns smiling. This dude had a sense of humour.

I’ll buy you a drink. ’Nother KBG?

Thanks. Watching his (beautiful) firm butt in tight jeans as he sauntered up to the bar, not buying into the challenging stares his being a stranger invited, polite in moving through the crowd. Sharneeta at that firm butt remembering she hadn’t had a man for, what, a couple of months. Feeling it register down there, the stickiness, the tingle, the ache (for love).

Leti invited her over to join his mates, said they were down from Auckland, on the cruise, checking different towns out, heard about Jojo’s and what they say is true. It’s a cool place, Leti’s smile reaching right into Sharns’s heart. So is Two Lakes cool.

They were of Samoan extraction, three of them, which might have brought them trouble if the mood of the predominant Maoris went that way. Or it could have turned out they were like brothers, Polynesians separated by centuries of relocation not (wild, happy) genes. The mood. In this world mood dictated so much.

Must’ve been Leti’s smiling charm and unthreatening manner got them invited to a party, where else but Pine Block. Sharns assuring Leti and his two mates it wasn’t a set-up, she knew the dudes who lived there, they just
liked a good time. But don’t play on being the coconuts from the Big Smoke, boys, or they’ll have you.

All night Sharns couldn’t recall such a sustained period of being free of her gloom. She danced the night away with Leti, and he got more handsome, more desirable by the minute.

When the sun came up on the still-raging party, Leti was showing signs of tiredness and Sharns asked if he needed a bed to grab a few hours’ sleep, as he’d said he was from out of town. He looked around for his buddies and they’d split, found them asleep in their car; so he and Sharns walked round two corners to her place.

Back at the flat Sharns found Alistair and Kayla’s bedroom door still shut and silence behind it. She was hot to trot but found Leti wasn’t. He insisted on sleeping on the sofa and of course she had to say sure. Throwing a blanket over him, she pecked his cheek good morning, and went off to grab some sleep herself, a little bit frustrated, a bigger bit pissed off, feeling rejected, she stood in front of her mirror every which way, asking if it was something undesirable about her. But she was dying to sleep, too.

She woke up with a dream she was being raped. Dream became reality. The handsome face of minutes ago was someone else’s. Felt worse when she’d wanted to have sex, maybe even make love as they’d got on so well this long night. But not this kind of sex.

Leti honey, have a sleep and we can do it at our leisure. Please? Don’t let it happen like this.

But Leti was too far gone, and clearly he found a willing sex partner not to his liking; he wanted control. To be boss man. In charge. Taking
his
pleasure.

So she lay back and let him do it, which didn’t take long but still it didn’t satisfy him. She guessed he never could find satisfaction, not if he could do this to her.

The arsehole slapped her. The next was a punch. And he spoke a kind of pidgin-English, Samoan style in abusing her. Her blood went all over her nice clean pillowcases, sheets and bedspread. Effin’ lowlife. Why did he have to do it like this?

She asked why he’d hit her.

Because you treat me with disrespect, he said. Not a woman’s place to ask for sex — ish a man’s.

He must be drunk and/or high on some drug from the party. Such a
handsome man, too. Jabbed a finger in her face and warned she better say nothing to anyone about this or he and his mates would be back.

Got off, calmly put on his trousers — or until her looking at him with obvious hurt had him whack her again.
Don’t
look at me like that, bitch! Then he was gone. (And he might’ve left something behind.)

She sat there waiting in the living room, away from the scene of
violation
. Till Alistair got up, for him two, three hours early and saw her, sitting there, huddled into herself, legs drawn up, shivering, not daring to think longer than a few seconds lest she crack.

Al went down on his knees and said, What’s happened, Sharns? His voice so genuine in its concern, face so genuine. But still a man, so she pushed him away, swore at him, asked him what would he care. That sort of stuff. When she didn’t mean it and how was her poor judgement of men any of Alistair’s fault?

Naturally he wasn’t staying down there, on his knees, offering help and friendship if she was going to be like this.

Alistair stood and shrugged those skinny shoulders. He looked rather appealing, vulnerable, an innocent and rejected unjustly. I’ll go wake Kayla up. Okay?

(Kayla? Kayla?) What would Kayla know about living in my head?

Well, she’s a woman. She likes you. But the darkness was coming in for Sharns. This time living, like a flying beast homing in on her, blotting her out in its wide-winged shadow, talons drawn, tearing beak on its way. All she could do to stop herself from screaming. Instinct telling her another life had begun inside her.

MOST SUNDAY LATE afternoons, Jake liked to be alone. Up here on the hill, in the cottage he loved, a couple of hours getting it spick and span, a habit he nearly depended on for his emotional well-being.

Weather permitting, he’d go out with a beer on the veranda, sit on the wooden steps and take in the view of Lake Rotorua and Mokoia Island in its centre, think of the history, Te Arawa tribal history, all them tattooed warriors first of all (the image of them comes to me first). A love tale, too, of Hinemoa swimming to her lover, Tutanekai, on Mokoia Island. The city’s two major streets bore their names, as did most of the streets remember the names of great Maori figures from the area’s past. (Not that I took any notice in the old days.) The Douglas brothers had educated Jake on the local history, so he had a story to go with each street.

Epic battles had taken place all around the lake, as each sub-tribe fought for dominance and yet became allies if attacked by another tribe. Jake thought he’d have been a warrior of some standing back then, but never a
general, never a man who commanded others, no. For he was not a planner, a strategist, and you needed to be a lateral thinker to command men in numbers. Jake Heke was a straight-down-the-middle man. A foot soldier and no more. Spear fodder, hahaha. He’d been informed some years ago his surname meant war party, so he figured the tales of his family being descended from slaves must’ve come about from an ancestor leading a war party and allowing himself to be taken captive and reduced to slave status.

The sun fell on his face of an evening, and with the beer giving that familiar buzz of an old true friend, a man never failed to feel good. About himself. About the world. He had fifteen-thousand dollars in savings, a job that paid pretty well, and on the romance (sex) side he occasionally got to bring a woman friend home for a night; though no one promising love like he’d felt for Rita (or Beth). He had the best of friends in the Douglas family, countless hunting and trout-fishing stories, their love of rugby, funny
incidents
to recall in games they’d played. And he had his guitar (my guitar, my ole voice) to take him back in time to wherever he wanted. Which was not right back, not the time when he was Jake the Muss who believed he was the best bar brawler in all of New Zealand and therefore the world. So come back some more years this way, to Rita times and how she influenced him. Which’d get him nostalgic, but never sentimental — Rita’d hate that — and get him wondering if maybe they couldn’t make another go of it.

He’d had his fiftieth birthday last year, so now he saw life differently; there was talk future governments wouldn’t be able to afford to pay old-age pensions, so how would he live then? Decided he’d follow the idea he had when he saw Beth and would ask Gordon Trambert if he’d sell the cottage to him. A real-estate-agent friend said it would be worth about a
hundred-eighty
thousand, less fifteen-grand deposit, a mortgage for the rest — on his wages he could easily service the loan. His skills at driving heavy machinery brought him over a thousand dollars a week. Why not own my own house?

Which again brought the question: Who do I leave it to when I die?

Abe, Polly, Huata, and Boogie. (Two others dead. And it stills hits me hard thinking about it.) Huata is in Sydney, according to reports. Boogie’s in Wellington. Jake hadn’t seen Abe since he gave evidence against that gang leader lowlife, Apeman, who murdered that woman, Tania. Abe was living in the South Island Jake last heard. Gone from home and I never knew them, not any of my kids, that’s the shameful part: I didn’t know them.

As for daughter Polly, she’s still around, one of his workmates said she
had bought a couple of houses down Pine Block way. When I don’t even own one.

Information on his children came to Jake the long way, and he could never be sure how true or accurate it was. It was strange having a son living in Sydney when Jake had never even been beyond Riverstone, a hundred kilometres away, let alone to the cities his sons lived in. (Not how life was fated for Jake Heke. But I did grow up. I did learn to feel sorry, deeply deeply sick at myself, at what I had done. So least that’s a journey, a
fulfilment
of sorts in itself.) Made him feel quite the unadventurous man. In fact, a bit of a loser, truth be known. (I been nowhere and done hardly nothing with my life.)

And then there was Beth.

It was an inevitability that took ten years to happen, running into Beth on the street. She was coming out of a shop and turned and was right there in his face. Beth, and yet couldn’t be more different to the Beth a man had known, all those miserable years for her ago. The only other time was passing each other at the cemetery, me finished visiting our kids’ graves, she on her way. Had nothing to say to each other. I wanted to. For our dead children’s sakes. But words wouldn’t come for the shame. I scurried off like a reject.

She looked dazzling. Blew me away. Didn’t realise it at first, but
chemistry
was going both ways. It was like the years when we first went together.

How you been?

Good, I said. No need to ask how you’ve been. You look great, I found myself saying. I ran into Charlie, out hunting.

Yes, he mentioned he did. By the way, did you guys have a hunting permit?

Did my backward Ali-shuffle of old, with a big grin. Permit? Didn’t know we needed a permit to hunt on Maori land. Took her smiling time in responding, too.

Yeah, sure, Jake. Another lingering (or is that appraising?) look. You being a hunter is hard to believe. (Looking at me in that way I know so well when she wanted love.)

Your man looks like he could do with some hunting to fitten him up.

Beth’s eyes went defensive. His mind is super fit. So is his heart, his integrity. She looked at Jake and waited for a compromise on the subject of her husband. But he didn’t feel anything welling up from his heart, so he said nothing.

She shrugged and said, But you’re right, he could do with some physical exercise. You living with someone these days?

No.

She smiled again, her teasing, knowing smile. Waste of all that explosive energy, eh, Jake?

He said, Yeah, guess it is. Just never met the right woman. Or maybe they didn’t like what they saw.

You look different. (Does that mean good?) On the face of it, I’d even say you look a changed man.

The way she said it, a man wanted to break down in tears, say sorry for everything, but that wouldn’t change it, would it? He said, Yes. One word, yet it meant everything.

Oh, well, she said. (Oh, well.) But she didn’t move and nor did (could) he.

He said, You wouldn’t guess who’s become my good friend.

Oh? Who would that possibly be? She searched her mind, their shared past for an unlikely name, shook her head. I can’t think. Who?

Gordon Trambert. He —

I know who he is. Her face grew a mask on the spot. He understood why. You and him … are mates?

Yep. I rent his farm cottage. Thought I might buy it.

Whoa, Jake. This is quite a lot to take in. You and Trambert are mates, you might buy the cottage you rent from him. She broke out in the broadest smile. Been some water under your bridge too, huh?

Yes, he nodded, guess there has been.

Well, I’ll be. Does he ever talk about finding Grace, how —

No. Because I haven’t asked him. (Not going to, neither.)

The moment seemed to have passed, and now it was time to go their separate ways. Then Jake got an idea. I need to talk to you, Beth. About a will. He felt awkward, as if he had another motive (and I do). I mean, if I own a house, then someone’s got to have it. If you want to meet up
somewhere,
have coffee.

She laughed. Isn’t it funny, Jake, you of all people offering to meet over a coffee? What do you drink?

Long black, he returned the grin. You?

Flat white. And they both stood there in the main street chuckling at her saying how they were all caught up in the changes of a country now become a café society.

What about your alcohol intake? Her question a little loaded this time.

I drink. Beer. Just don’t get wasted anymore, except once in a while.

And then what are you like? This question asked so softly.

Then I go to sleep.

You don’t … ?

No, I don’t do that. Not to anyone. (It’s finished.)

I’m real glad to hear that, Jake. Not even once in the last few years you’ve raised your fists to anyone?

Not even once, Beth. (Bethy. What I used to call you in our better moments.)

Okay, let’s swap phone numbers and get together to discuss this — she paused — this will of yours. Said with faintly disbelieving smile.

Well, that was some weeks ago and he hadn’t found the courage to call her, and as she hadn’t rung him, maybe he read that face wrong. And maybe it was not meant to be. So forget it and her, Jake, if you want to get nostalgic, do it in song.

So he sang a real old number, by the Ink Spots, in that warbling,
tremulous
voice that suits a Maori, but he didn’t reach the level an American Negro’s voice does. (Because we didn’t suffer like you Negroes did. Me, I only got
told
I was a slave. You guys
were
slaves. And maybe all the best things come out of suffering. Of self or group or sect or an entire race of people. I mean really suffering, not this self-indulgent stuff.) He lost himself in the song, enjoying playing the minor chords, when out of the trees on his right, where the dirt road reaches the crest and swings this way came a vehicle.

He kept strumming, singing, until he saw who stepped out of the car. Beth.

A sexual thrill passed through Jake, like a woman’s breath whispering a promise, or just soft words. Bethy’s home. The words formed in his head in the instant.