Settlers' Creek (13 page)

But he could never imagine that life for himself. He shook his head and set off back down the hill.

The furnace’s tall brick chimney rose fifteen metres above Box. When Pop still grew tomatoes the glasshouses had been heated by hot water pushed through pipes. The old bloke used to have a pile of coal delivered weekly from June to September. Box still remembered the noise as the deck of the delivery truck would slowly lever up and the coal began to avalanche onto the ground. A black cloud of coal dust like a billion small dark flies would rise up. But the old furnace hadn’t been lit in years. Deregulation
in the mid-eighties and the wave of cheap imports from Australia had ripped the guts out of local tomato growing. Pop had staggered on for longer than most, doing the best he could, but even in the best years he’d managed to do little more than break even.

When Box was ten he’d been deemed old enough to help shovel the coal. He remembered standing close to the open door of the furnace, feeling the sweat dripping down his back, his arms aching from the lift and heft of the shovel. It wasn’t as Victorian as it sounded, though. Box had liked using his body to help with the running of the place. It had been good for him. It let Box forge a sense of himself. This is what men did. They used their hands and the strength in their backs and legs to keep things functioning.

There were other benefits of hard work. He remembered standing stark naked in front of the mirror in his room looking at his newly defined muscles. That summer at the community pool he’d been sure that he’d seen Katherine Tyler looking at him in a new way. Not that he’d been brave enough to do anything about it.

A noise dragged him back to his surroundings. There was someone in the first glasshouse. Box went over to the door and stood looking into the vast hangar of steel and glass. It was a woman. She was bending over in the corner to his left, old corduroy pants stretched over an arse like two fat boys under a sheet. She must have heard him because she straightened up and turned. Her hair was a pale blonde.

‘Yes? Hello.’

She scratched at the tip of her nose with the back of her gardening glove as she spoke. At her feet was a tight carpet of containers, hundreds Box guessed, each one holding a
cacti — cactus? He could never remember. Succulents, anyway, all spines and swollen leaves.

‘Sorry, I didn’t know you were here. I’m Dee’s grandson.’

‘Box?’

‘Yeah.’

The woman smiled. ‘I’m Ali Jackson. You went to school with my older brothers, James and Aaron.’

He walked towards her and felt the air turn humid. ‘Sure, I remember them.’

Freckled redheads, both of them, close enough in age to be referred to by people in the bay as ‘Irish twins’. Box could’ve told you that James and Aaron Jackson had a younger sister but he had no real memory of her. Apparently she’d grown up into a pear-shaped woman with a warm smile. She probably had kids of her own; she certainly looked like she should.

Ali Jackson picked her way through the plants to where Box was standing. ‘I was sorry to hear about your son.’

Box looked away to the glass walls. He wondered exactly what she’d heard. ‘Thank you.’

‘Sorry. Word travels fast in the bay.’

‘Sure.’

‘Would you mind if I came to the funeral? A lot of the locals want to be there to support the family.’

You mean to support Dee, thought Box. ‘Of course. Sure.’ He looked over at the containers. ‘You’re growing succulents.’

‘Cacti.’

‘Right.’

‘I’m just leasing this space from Dee. I feel guilty, though. She’s hardly charging me anything. This is something my husband and I are trying.’

‘How’s it going?’

‘So-so. We sell to big garden centres mostly. Even with the recession, cacti are quite popular for landscaping right now.’

Perhaps it was the heat, but Box felt suddenly light-headed. He reached out and put his hand on one of the glasshouse’s steel supports. It seemed to move under his weight, rolling away. The ground tilted and swelled up to meet him. He heard himself cry out.

Ali Jackson was staring at him, eyes wide. ‘Box? What’s the matter? Are you all right?’

Again, the ground surged and rolled, back the other way this time. Box had to bend his knees and shift his weight to stop himself from falling. There was a creaking sound like wood shifting and settling back. He felt himself go down on his knees.

And then the feeling passed and everything was still and quiet except for the sound of Ali asking him what was wrong.

Box stared around, bug eyed, breathing raggedly. The ground beneath his feet had gone back to being as level and solid as — as, well, as the ground. Ali Jackson hadn’t moved. She was standing where he had left her, staring down at him with a look of worry stamped on her face.

Sweat was leaking down into his eyes. He tried to get up off his knees and almost fell again.

‘Here, let me help you.’ Box felt Ali take his arm. She helped him walk slowly over to the door and out into the cool air. The brick chimney stretched up above him. The only movement came from the poplars down by the road as the tops bent and snapped back in the onshore breeze.

‘Box? Are you okay?’

‘Didn’t you feel that?’

‘No, what?’

‘I thought it was an earthquake’

‘No.’

He didn’t mention the voices. Now that he was outside he had time to wonder about those. In among the adrenaline rush of panic he’d heard voices, as though there had been other people right there in the glasshouse, people all around him.

‘I’ll get Dee,’ Ali said.

‘No.’

‘But …’

‘I’m fine now. I guess it’s just the stress.’

‘You should see a doctor.’

‘I will,’ he lied. ‘Look, I’m really feeling much better now. I’m going to go. I’ll see you later, okay.’

‘Take care.’

Box walked away in the direction of the ute, forcing himself to breathe deeply. Pop used to have what he called his ‘turns’. Doctor Foster had called it high blood pressure. Almost as high as Pop’s cholesterol, apparently; the result of a lifetime’s worth of butter smeared thickly onto bread, full-cream milk, and mutton with the fat laid through it in broad white seams. Box could remember seeing Pop sway when he got up from the couch too quickly. Twice, when Box was in his late teens, his grandfather had fallen. They’d been alone, once in the tractor shed, the other time in the bottom field. That had scared Box. Both times, Pop had staggered back to his feet and muttered out embarrassed dismissals as he brushed the earth from his trousers.

‘Don’t tell your grandmother, Box. It’s nothing. Just one of my turns.’

‘Okay.’

Nothing was wrong. Everything was fine. There was work to do.

But apparently, now it was Box’s turn — his turn to have a turn — to experience the shifting, tilting dislocation; worse than he’d imagined. He was probably right when he’d told Ali that it was caused by stress and grief. Who knows, his blood pressure was probably through the roof.

Box parked the ute with its grille almost kissing the white picket fence, then walked up towards the church along the shingle path between the old graves. The churchyard was in heavy shadow. With no regard for the future, big fir trees had been planted years ago along the northern side. The trees had grown taller even than the cross on the top of the church roof. He’d arranged to meet the minister at one o’clock, but there was no sign of the other man. Box stood and looked around. The walls of the church were hewn out of blocks of volcanic stone. The roof was finished with slate tiles and was pitched steeply with wide eaves that sheltered the agapanthus growing beneath.

As a boy he’d played here with kids from school. Back then, there had been only the Marshalls’ horse paddock between the church and his grandparents’ north boundary — easier to cross than a city street. And a bloody sight safer. During breaks from whatever game was flavour of the month Box would read the names on the graves. He’d always marvelled at the magic when those mossy, chiselled letters — ‘Saxton’ — were the same as the letters he spelled out in pencil on the front of his school exercise books.

Box walked over to a plot where the ancient concrete lid had sunk half a metre into the ground and was cracked in a jagged lightning-bolt pattern. It was surrounded by a low iron fence, each vertical bar topped by a rusted fleur- delis. His great-great-grandfather — Randall of the horses and the dust — was buried under there. Although he’d died, what, almost thirty years before her, Randall shared the plot, like a decrepit double bed, with his serving-girl wife, Lillian. Box knew that four of their seven children were also buried close by. Two of them were tiny graves, the kids dead before their first birthday.

Another Saxton lay two graves over from Randall and his wife. Pop’s younger sister, Mary Rose, died giving birth to her first child. She was seventeen when she died and now lay among the roots of the last fir in the row.

Box carried on up past the church to the newer part of the churchyard, which had been opened up in the mid-seventies. It was a gently sloping lawn, sunny and, even after thirty years, not yet cluttered by graves. Only people with a family connection to the bay could be buried here. Even so, there were two raised mounds of dirt that hadn’t been here the last time he visited. One mound had settled lower than the other and weeds had begun to grow on the bare earth.

Box walked over the lawn to where two black granite tombstones stood side by side. Two of Dee’s glass preserving jars, one on each grave, were jammed with stiff proteas. The grave on the right belonged to his grandfather, Pop.

On the other headstone, the white on black wording simply said, ‘Paul Augustus Saxton 1960–1978’.

Box began to pull the trigger. His grandfather’s whisper came from behind him, barely audible, ‘Gently, gently, just squeeze it.’

At the sound of the shot, the remaining deer ran: a frantic zigzagging dart of movement among the yellow and tan tussock. There were three deer: another yearling hind and two spikers. They were all exposed against the dark wall of mountain beech as they leapt and dodged down the slope. For a moment they were running parallel with the line of the bush before they swerved downhill along a small creekbed and disappeared into the dark-stained trunks of the trees. The echo of the shot off the far wall of the valley still hung in the air.

Box remained lying on the damp ground. His heart was beating hard against the earth and his rifle rested in front of him, balanced on his pack. His grandfather squatted about a body length behind him. Box could feel the almost-bruise
where the stock had kicked back into his shoulder.

‘Take a look. What do you see?’

When he brought his eye back to the scope, Box saw the back legs of the hind he’d shot. She lay among the wet tussock. He watched but there was no movement, just the tussock shifting in the slight westerly wind.

His grandfather’s soft whisper came from over his shoulder. ‘Just stay where you are. Take your time, keep watching.’

‘Why? I shot it.’

‘An animal that you think is dead as a doornail can sometimes get up and run off, away into the bush. Then you and I would have to track it, which could take us hours, even a full day. It’s easier to stay put and watch for a minute or two with a second shot ready in the chamber. Understand?’

Box kept his eye to the scope. ‘Okay.’

The shot hind didn’t move, not so much as a twitch. He waited.

‘Is that long enough?’

‘Okay.’

Box stood and, under his grandfather’s gaze, worked the bolt of the rifle and took the bullet out of the chamber. Then both he and Pop hoisted their packs onto their shoulders and moved the hundred metres down the slope. The tussock brushed wetly against Box’s legs above his boots. It had rained for several hours in the night, a storm that had made a din on the iron roof of the hut. He’d lain in his sleeping bag on the top bunk and looked across at the embers of the fire. He’d still been awake when his grandfather had got up and slipped out the unlocked door. Box imagined him standing under the tin eaves smoking a cigarette and looking out at — what? There were no lights, not even the moon, just blackness and the sound of the rain.

When Pop had come back in about half an hour later he threw another log into the embers. Flames had sprung up almost immediately around the edges of the dry wood.

Box had wished that Paul was with them on the hunting trip. Did and didn’t, both at the same time. It was good to have Pop all to himself for a change.

Paul was supposed to come but Pop and Paul had argued loudly on the day that they were to set off. With his back pressed against the wall of the hallway, Box had stood and listened. It was an on again, off again dispute that had been simmering for months and had now come to a head. There was a girl that Pop and Dee, mainly Dee, didn’t think Paul should keep on seeing. Dee said seventeen was too young for Paul to be getting serious. But the truth was that the girl was one of the Fowler clan from the next bay. For long-standing reasons unclear to Box, Dee had never thought much of the Fowlers.

Paul had stormed out of the music room, past Box, shouting that he wasn’t going hunting. Hunting was ‘the last thing’ he wanted to do.

Box had felt sick to think that that was the end of the trip. But later in the morning Pop had thrown two packs in the back of the truck. Neither of them had mentioned the argument or Paul in the two days since then.

‘Did I wake you up?’

‘Nah.’

‘Go back to sleep, Box. This rain won’t last.’

Pop had been right. The rain was gone in the morning, though the bush they were walking through had stroked them with wet hands.

Now Box was standing over the body of the deer. He’d been hunting with his grandfather for two days and they’d
seen other deer but this was the only one they’d shot, and he’d shot it. It was his first.

It had gone down close to the shadows of the beech trees but still lay in the bright morning sunshine. He saw that the bullet had cut the jugular. He’d taken a neck shot because his grandfather had told him that was better. Unless you were planning on keeping the head as a trophy; then you didn’t want to spoil the skin around the shoulders.

There was maroon blood on the ground near Box’s boots. The blood had run downhill for a short distance and was still pooling at the base of a lichen-covered rock. It didn’t bother him even though there was a lot of blood, more than he would have guessed. He felt good that it didn’t bother him. It was just blood.

His grandfather swung his pack off his shoulders and undid the top flap and took out his knife in its sheath. Pop’s hunting knife was handmade from good steel, the handle kauri inlaid with strips of white bone. Box often held it when his grandfather wasn’t around. He loved the heaviness of the knife and the curve of the handle and the way the wood and the bone warmed in his palm. Taking his time, standing in the sunlight, his grandfather tested the edge along the dark hairs on the back of his forearm. There was a small whetstone in his pack if he needed it.

Box watched as his grandfather cut the hind’s throat to bleed it and then worked his knife in around the anus.

‘You do this to free the guts, otherwise they won’t come out easily.’

‘Okay.’

From his pack, Pop took out a set of small steel pulleys and a gambrel, and three metres of nylon rope. He tied
the rope to the gambrel and then Box helped by trying to throw the rope over a branch of a nearby tree, one slightly out on its own from the others. He was relieved when he got it over on the fourth try.

When everything was ready, Pop carried the limp deer over and pulled it off the ground by the back legs. Box saw how careful he was not to get blood on himself. Once the deer was strung up, his grandfather used the knife without hesitation or conscious thought. He cut down along the coarse skin next to the spine, then cut and pulled the skin free, revealing the back steaks. Pop sliced down along the left side of the spine at right angles, pulling the steaks clear with his free hand.

As his grandfather worked, butchering the deer, he talked in his slow laconic voice, explaining what he was doing and why it was the best way. He chose his words carefully as though there was a limited supply and he didn’t want to waste any.

The morning air was newly washed and clean. Box could smell the blood and the richer smell of offal coming from the carcass of the deer. The autumn sunlight warmed Box’s clothes and dried his bush shirt where it had become damp from lying on the ground.

His grandfather placed the cut meat carefully on the rectangles of polythene he’d got Box to lay on the ground. When he’d removed all the meat he could, Pop had lowered the remains of the carcass. He pulled free the hooks, wiping them clean on a clump of tussock, and coiled the nylon rope before putting both back inside his pack.

‘What about that?’ Box gestured toward the left-over horror of bone and muscle.

‘We’ll just leave it there. Wild pigs and the keas will
pick it clean soon enough. In a couple of days there’ll be nothing left.’

They shared out the wrapped meat between them. Box packed his share into the bottom of his backpack and repacked his clothes and his share of the remaining food. He cast around to see if they had left anything behind. No, nothing.

His pack was heavy as he moved up and across the face of the slope. It took them twenty minutes to reach the ridgeline. His grandfather stopped and looked around and Box did the same. The air was crisp and clear. The valley narrowed sharply below them, river-cut down into granite. It was the first week in May but there hadn’t yet been any snow. The mountaintops to the west were grey screes of shingle bleeding slowly down towards the bushline, and below him, on the south side of the valley, the beech forest was still in shadow. The river worked its way through the trees. Box saw the big granite boulders and watched the white water foaming between the rocks. From where he stood he could also see east to where the valley opened out into grassed riverflats dotted with lupin and gorse.

Box had shot only one deer and then only for the meat, not a trophy head or anything, but even so Paul was going to be jealous. Box stood and breathed the view in so that he would remember it until next time. And then he turned and followed his grandfather as they began the three-hour tramp back to where they’d left the truck.

It had been early evening when Pop drove around the last curve in the driveway. Box was amazed to see half a
dozen cars pulled up in front of the house. He recognised the Turners’ blue Ford. And that was the Reverend McKellar’s Mini, an overgrown breadbox nosed up onto their lawn. It looked like most of the families from the bay were there. At first Box thought that people had come to their house to celebrate the fact that he’d shot his first deer. He imagined generously handing out portions of the wrapped meat for people to take home and eat.

But his grandfather had sworn, something he almost never did. Box had looked across at him sitting behind the wheel and had seen the grey-stubbled skin go tight across Pop’s jaw. His grandfather brought the truck to a stop in the middle of the drive. Pop jumped out and almost ran up the steps but then hesitated at the big door, which stood open, as if he was afraid to go inside the house.

Box was still sitting in the cab. He didn’t have a clue what was going on. He watched, puzzled, as Pop finally went inside.

Box found them all in the singing room. He couldn’t remember seeing a bigger crowd in there, not even at Christmas. Dee saw him standing in the doorway and came over. She turned him gently with one hand on his shoulder and took him to the kitchen, sat him down at the table. When she spoke her voice wasn’t her own.

Box listened to what she told him. It was quite simple really: Paul had taken the dinghy out the evening before. He hadn’t come back.

‘But …’

‘No, Box. Mr Maurice found the dinghy washed up below the cliffs on the north side of Bird Island. It was full of water.’

‘He might just be on the island somewhere.’

Dee put a hand on his head. ‘No, people have already searched. It’s good to have hope, Box. But not too much.’

‘Mr Saxton?’

Box flinched and turned quickly.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, my fault. I was miles away.’

The vicar smiled apologetically. He was no older than thirty, a slim man with a long face who was wearing a jersey with a snowflake pattern in a band across the front. Box thought that the jersey made him look as though he’d been dressed by his mother.

‘I’m Anton de Bruin. I spoke to Liz on the phone.’ He held out his hand and Box shook it.

‘Box.’

‘Box? I thought that’s what Liz said. It’s unusual.’

‘Just a nickname that stuck.’

He nodded. ‘I was very sorry to hear about your son.’

‘Thanks. When did Reverend McKellar leave?’

‘He retired about five years ago. He’s spending most of his time fishing in Taupo. He’s stopped being a fisher of men and become a fisher of brown trout.’

It was a line he’d obviously used before. Box half smiled to be polite.

De Bruin looked at the grave at Box’s feet. ‘Your brother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your family seems to have had more than its fair share of tragedy.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Dee’s told me a lot about the Saxtons. I see her here most
Sundays. And of course our church fair makes half its profit from the sale of her preserves.’

They stood quietly for an unmeasured length of time. Box was surprised to find that he didn’t feel embarrassed by the silence. In his experience, men tended to fill the gaps between them with talk of sunshine or frost. Or how the All Blacks’ back line had performed in the last game. Now, there was just the wind in the top of the fir trees. A sheep bleated somewhere high in the hills.