Kiwi Tracks (24 page)

‘We were parachuted in, worked in teams of two, sometimes for weeks at a time before they bailed us out with a chopper dust off.’ He is reflective for some time. ‘Now I see tourists wearing T-shirts with: “I was on such-and-such adventure tour in Vietnam.” ’ He speaks quietly, staring at the waterfalls. ‘Still can’t cope with it; not because I’ve got anything against the Vietnamese, but just because … it seems such a colossal waste of lives and effort when, not so long after the Vietnam war, young Americans who never had to deal with the fighting are going there on adventure holidays.’ His eyes blink thoughtfully with memories he keeps to himself. ‘Guess I was on an adventure tour there myself,’ he concludes finally, with a shake of his head. ‘We
were fighting the spread of Communism; now American companies support Communist China’s economic growth. If I had to do it again, I’d be a conscientious objector.’

He rests his chin on his stick for a while before he stands upright again. ‘The real irony is, I’d be a defector knowing what I do now. That says something, because we were sent in to locate defectors so that they could be assassinated by a follow-up team.’ He is so quiet, I can hear him breathing. ‘Then, I believed in what we were doing. We were given the choice after that, either to extend our tour of duty by some months, and when we got back to the States be discharged immediately, or to leave Vietnam on schedule, but spend more time back in the States, but still in the army. I extended my tour in Vietnam. Within days of getting back to the States, I was no longer in the military and wandering around city streets. I thought everyone had changed while I was away. Only later I realised all my friends were still the same, it was me who had changed.’

He studies the falls, the forest and the idyllic pool below us. Ingrid climbs out of the water and sits beside it, contemplating. ‘I wish we had been sent here to the rainforests of New Zealand, instead of back home to the States. After Vietnam, we needed to adjust. Get a chance to walk around in this kind of bush, without worrying about being shot at. Without worrying about anything. Would have been good therapy.’

Ingrid climbs back into the pool. I feel like joining her but do not want to interrupt Pat. I am about to say something, thinking he has stopped, but then he adds: ‘After Vietnam I went to college. Got a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature. Took a course on women’s issues.’ He laughs. ‘The first day I walked into the class, they thought I had come into the wrong room. They were all women. I told them I was a lesbian in disguise.’ He shrugs. ‘At college I had summer jobs in construction work. My dad got me the job, he was a construction worker, as was his dad. I finished my degree and now I’m still a construction worker. Sometimes I feel like I’m paving the world one square metre at a time.’

He shakes his head. ‘This is my seventh trip to New Zealand. It’s all I save up for. Just walking around the bush for a few months at a time, remembering and trying to forget the war. I had nightmares for years. I saw bad things in Vietnam I hope never to see in my life again. I experienced and did bad things myself. It’s a rehabilitation process for me, walking in this jungle. I’m still working at it.’ He laughs self-consciously before continuing. It hardly seems possible this gentle giant could ever have done anything bad. ‘When I first went out to Vietnam, I thought I was immortal. That soon changed. If you’ve any kind of imagination, you’re convinced you’re gonna die. I felt intensely alive in Vietnam because I was so aware of being mortal, as opposed to being shot at and killed. In New Zealand I have the same feeling. Walking in the bush here, I feel alive again; but this time it is no longer conditional on surviving the day.’

Ingrid sits on the edge of the rocks, watching the water falling into the pool. Pat asks, ‘How long have you and Ingrid known each other?’

‘Met her the evening before we met you.’

He steps back. ‘You’re kidding. I thought you were friends from way back.’

‘Just seems that way,’ I reply, as Ingrid climbs back up to join us. ‘We did a lot of talking that first night. Didn’t hold anything back.’

We walk in silence after that, Ingrid leading, Pat following. By the time we arrive at the next hut, it is already early evening. There is no one else there. Ingrid lights a candle she has brought with her and I start preparing dinner. Pat pulls out a zip-lock bag with ready-made peanut butter and jam sandwiches inside. The jam is bleeding into the bread like beetroot juice. He consumes pre-packed sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They hardly seem an adequate meal for a man of Pat’s size.

‘Are you sure you’ve got enough to eat?’ Ingrid asks. Last night he had insisted his sandwiches were all he wanted or needed, but we have been walking for two days now.

‘You’ll starve,’ I say.

Pat glances over at the pot of spaghetti that Ingrid and I share between us. ‘I’m trying to lose a bit of weight,’ he says, taking a big bite out of a small sandwich. He is thickset, maybe a little chubby around the belly, but certainly not fat.

Ingrid and I could easily polish off the spaghetti, but we offer to share it with Pat. ‘Come on, we’d never be able to finish it.’

He declines at first: ‘No thanks.’

Finally we get him to accept and he eagerly devours the pasta. Satiated, he leans back happily against the wooden wall of the hut. Now in an expansive mood, he tells us: ‘I remember being invited to a Kiwi family’s house for dinner on my first trip to New Zealand. They heaped so much meat on my plate and after the first helping they asked me if I wanted more. I couldn’t, and replied: “No thanks, I’m stuffed.” There was an awful silence around the table. Someone started chuckling. I didn’t know what I’d said wrong. “No, really, I’m stuffed,” I repeated. Then someone burst out laughing and they explained that “being stuffed” wasn’t exactly the right thing to say after being invited over for a meal. Means you’re buggered or something like that.’

It is misty and drizzly outside. A breeze blows ripples on the rocky shore. For the second morning in a row, Pat is wandering around the forest somewhere, having already slipped out of his bunk before dawn so silently and stealthily that neither Ingrid nor I heard him leave. There is a loneliness and sadness about Pat, the ultimate Lonely Guy looking for himself, looking for the youth he lost in Vietnam, looking for something, although much the same can be said of Ingrid and myself.

Ingrid lights a fire in the pot-bellied stove. The wet wood takes time to catch and smoke billows from the chimney. Pat emerges from the mist. He is clean-shaven and his grey walrus moustache is perfectly groomed. He opens another zip-lock plastic bag with more leaking peanut butter and jam sandwiches inside. After breakfast, we diligently clean out the hut so it is considerably
tidier than when we arrived, and head into the dense forest towards Te Puna Hut, arriving there by mid-afternoon.

We can smell the bacon, sausages, beans and French fries before we enter the hut. A butcher shop worth of red steaks and sausages is in a couple of open coolers, a plastic garbage bag is stuffed with empty beer bottles and several full bottles of Scotch sit on a counter. Pat can scarcely believe his eyes when he sees the food, the idea of surviving on peanut butter and jam sandwiches for three days on the basis of losing weight finally having worn thin, even if he has not. He hovers around the unprotected food like a hungry black bear, as if just being near it would replenish him. Three men in shorts and gumboots ignore us, behaving almost as if we had intruded on their private bach, their own cabin. Finishing breakfast, they leave the remaining tucker in the closed chilly bin, but pack their motor boat with beer and whisky.

It rains again but inside it feels warm and cosy. When it gets dark we make dinner together and talk for hours. Ingrid plays with the flickering candle, recycling the dripping wax to make it last longer. The scene is timeless, like a replica of an old oil painting, with shadows cast by the warm candlelight, the play of subdued colours tinged by an eerie, orange glow.

We are in our bunks fast asleep when the fishermen return. I awaken when I hear the outboard engine and the scrunch of the aluminium hull as it scrapes on the stony beach, followed by the voices of the men as they clamber out. Judging by their loud conversation and their clumsiness when they enter the hut, they are drunk. We hear them noisily preparing dinner although it is well past midnight and it is clear that they keep drinking and get progressively more intoxicated. An argument breaks out; one insists on water skiing but the owner of the motor boat refuses and they shove each other around. One leaves to start the boat but we hear him stumble off the porch steps and fall, apparently passing out. Eventually the other two climb into their bunks on the other side of the hut. I look at my watch; it is four in the morning.

Next morning the fishermen are either fast asleep or passed out, two in the bunks, one sprawled outside beside the path. None of them stirs when we leave. They were probably so drunk they won’t remember the acrimonious session last night and continue the best of friends, as if nothing had happened.

When we arrive at the dock where the water taxi will pick us up, Pat decides to stay, to haunt Lake Waikaremoana for another couple of days. Ingrid and I get into the boat and wave back at Pat. He is half-hidden in the bushes, just as he was when we first met him. Leaving him behind, there is a sense of losing a close friend.

The gregarious water-taxi operator asks us: ‘So where you heading?’

Ingrid says: ‘Back to the South Island.’

I tell him: ‘Gisborne and the East Cape.’

He says: ‘I’m going there myself, trailing my boat to get it serviced. Come with me if you want.’

The suggestion is unexpected and a bonus. Hitching up East Cape will not be easy because there is so little traffic. I accept his offer, knowing Ingrid must head down to Wellington to catch the ferry, which she has already booked and paid for. If she misses the ferry, it will be difficult reserving another passage at short notice.

The sadness we feel leaving Pat behind is compounded when Ingrid and I reach the bunkhouse, where she packs up her car to head south for the ferry. We exchange addresses, writing in each other’s address books; the formal ritual of travellers reluctant to admit the significance of departure, unwilling to concede closure of a friendship just begun. She drives off, waving out of the window as long as I remain in sight; within minutes, I feel lonelier than when I arrived here four days ago.

I shuffle around moodily until the water-taxi operator signals that he is ready to leave. I push my pack over the transom into the back of his boat, which is now sitting high and dry on the trailer, and climb into the front passenger seat of his car.

He is happy to have someone to talk to. ‘The local Maori accused me of taking jobs from them when I started this business,’
he tells me almost straightaway. ‘There weren’t any kayaks or water taxis operating here before, so I’m creating jobs, and not taking them. But none of them wants to work for me. Some of the Maori, not all, say this is their land. I ask them: “Which tribe?” They fought over it so much it wasn’t clear whose tribal land it was anyway. Now they want royalties from the Waitangi Tribunal for the hydro stations generating power from the lake. They say it’s their lake, their water. I just tell them “their” water disappeared out of the lake a long time ago, and if they can show me which piece of water’s “theirs”, they can gladly have it back.’

I sit listening to him, my mind not quite focused, still thinking back to the time spent with Ingrid and Pat.

On the coastal road to Gisborne, the old sheep paddocks have been converted to maize and squash fields, vineyards or orchards. My driver points out the landscape: ‘All over the East Coast, land that looked like this gave good stocking rates for sheep and cattle. Once the soil’s nutrient content was depleted and exposed to the full effects of erosion, without its original tree cover, it became very unstable. Now the depleted hillsides are being replanted with radiata pine. In ten years they will undoubtedly realise they’ve stuffed up doing that too.’

We drive past a roadside billboard advertising beer: ‘If you want me to spend more time in the kitchen, put more beer in the fridge’.