Settlers' Creek (20 page)

A frown. ‘Look, don’t dick with me, mate.’

‘I’m serious. I’ve always wanted to get up close to a dolphin.’

The guy stared for a moment, then shook his head.
‘Okay, sure. Tipene said to tell you that you’re welcome to come to Maaka’s tangi.’

‘My son’s name was Mark.’

‘Maaka, Mark. Same thing.’

‘No, it’s not. His name was Mark. His whole life it was Mark. That’s what his family called him. That’s what he called himself.’

‘Okay. Calm down. The message is still you’re invited to the tangi.’

‘You tell good old Steve that I said he can go fuck himself.’

The man’s face turned wooden. ‘The offer was made, eh bro.’

‘What’d he expect? Tipene was invited to
our
family’s funeral. And we all know how he pissed all over that offer. Eh, bro.’ The last two words were a mocking piece of mimicry.

The big Maori in front of him let it go. ‘I can see why you’re pissed off. I really can.’

‘Mate, I’m way beyond pissed off.’

Box stepped forward so that he was within an arm’s length of the man. The guy was half a head taller and, Box guessed, at least twenty kilograms heavier. But he wasn’t anywhere near as mad. Box thought that would make a difference in a fight.

When Box moved forward the dark shadow-man inside the car opened the door and swivelled in his seat to put both feet on the ground. He stood. Box saw the spiralling swirl of tattoos on his face. His eyes never left Box.

The Maori in front of him hadn’t taken his eyes off Box either. ‘I’ve done my job. The offer’s been made.’ He took two steps back, still staring at Box, then turned quickly and walked over to the Holden. Both men got in. The car
moved forward with a vibrating rumble. As they drove past the motel’s reception, Box saw the driver lift a hand in greeting to the owner. And then the Holden turned right onto the highway. Box heard the driver open up the engine, accelerating quickly back towards town.

Box went back inside. He closed and deadlocked the door. And then he sat on the bed and opened another bottle of beer while he thought about his next move.

Box entered the bar of the Mariner. There were a little over a dozen people there and all but a couple of them looked like locals; most were Maori.

Although the town had used tourist dollars to spruce itself up, as far as he could tell this bar hadn’t changed much in the last twenty years. Actually it looked more like fifty years. Generations of slopped beer like pungent varnish had stained the wooden floor in front of the big L-shaped bar. At the far end of the big room a fire blazed and spat sparks at the back of a mesh fireguard. Most of the people sat at tables down that end, taking advantage of the free heat.

Framed black and white photographs of old rugby teams were lined up along the walls. Box looked with interest at a couple of trophy heads. The thar was the best, its coat long and bleached with that colour old thar get in the early spring. A big screen on the wall was playing
Sky Sport with the sound right down low: a repeat of last weekend’s lacklustre Crusaders and Highlanders game.

The woman who served Box was about his age but she wore her dark hair up in pigtails. Box was undecided whether it made her look sexy or silly.

‘How ya going?’ she asked and smiled.

‘Fine. A CD, thanks.’

Box stayed standing at the bar to drink his beer, watching the game of pool going on at the table. There were two men and two women, playing doubles. All of them were Maori. They were laughing, having a good time, the guys younger than Box by a good fifteen years, the women younger still. They sat at a round table close to the game, each person getting up when it was his or her turn. One of the woman was plain looking but the other was a stunner. He’d seen her before, when he’d first returned to the house. She’d been the one who explained to him what the old man was saying in his long speech. Tonight her curly hair was pulled back from her face, tied like a bunch of springs at the back of her head. She wore black jeans and, in the hot dry heat from the fire, a dark T-shirt. When it was her turn she moved confidently around the table. Her shooting was hard and accurate. She didn’t seem to have noticed him yet.

Box alternated between watching the pool game and the rugby. He drank his first handle of beer quickly and bought another one. The edge of the room’s swirling talk lapped against him. People laughed and hassled each other. He finished his second beer as the All Black game stopped for half-time and bought a third. He drank the top off it and then carried the beer over to near the pool table, where he stood watching. The latest two beers, taken fast like
Dee’s foul flu medicine, had done the trick. His muscles were starting to unbunch from around the base of his neck. The four players glanced at him but were still talking and laughing, making jokes. The balls clicked together with the sound of ice in a glass and, when they found the pockets, rumbled down into the guts of the table.

Box stepped forward and put a two-dollar coin on the edge of the table. ‘How about I play the winner?’

The skinny guy in the jeans and blue T-shirt was circling the table looking for his next shot. ‘We’re playing pairs.’

As he spoke Box noticed that he was missing at least three teeth in the front.

‘Well then, how about I play the wahine.’

The guy frowned and straightened up. ‘You got a problem, mate?’

‘No offence. I just want to play a game.’

‘Like I said, we’re playing doubles.’

The woman from the house was staring at Box. She had obviously recognised him now. She stepped forward.

‘It’s all right, Johnno.’

Box saw the guy shrug. ‘If she wants to play you it’s none of my business.’

‘How about it?’ asked Box.

‘Okay.’ Not exactly enthusiastic, but he could live with that.

Box nodded and stepped back. He was aware that over at their table the others were talking about him, the woman from the house obviously telling them who he was, speculating on why he was here tonight. He guessed that most of the town knew how Mark’s body had been taken.

When their game was over Box put his coin into the slot. The balls avalanched into the tray at the end of the
table and Box took them out and racked them up while the woman stood holding her cue and watched.

‘You can break,’ said Box.

She sank a ball off the break, then followed it up by pocketing two more before just rolling a ball short of a corner pocket.

‘You’ve been practising.’

‘Reckon.’ No smile. No eye contact.

‘A misspent childhood?’

‘What?’

‘People who are good at this game usually spent too much time in pubs when they were younger.’

She shrugged.

‘You don’t say that much.’

‘Just play pool, eh.’

Box smiled amiably. ‘Okay.’

The beers had made Box feel loose and confident. He sank four balls in quick succession.

‘You too,’ she said. ‘Looks like you’ve spent a bit of time in pubs.’

‘I was in the army for five years, in my early twenties. Most times out on the base there wasn’t a lot else to do in the evenings.’

‘Johnno was in the army.’

‘The guy with the pretty smile?’

She grinned, then immediately looked like she regretted it. ‘Yeah, for a couple of years, I think.’

‘I don’t recognise him. But then again they all look the same to me.’

Her face clouded over.

‘Army guys. They all look the same to me.’

Box deliberately missed his next shot. He could tell that
she was thinking about walking away from the game, that he’d pushed it too far, but after a pause she began choosing her angle. He was wondering when, or if, she was going to acknowledge that she remembered him from the house. She played a shot and missed so it was his turn again.

‘You going to Mark’s tangi?

She shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

‘I thought everyone was supposed to turn up for a funeral.’

‘I might go up later.’

‘For a bit of a free feed?’

‘No.’

He kept his voice casual. ‘It sounds to me like you’re one of those weekend Maori. Only Maori when it helps you to get a handout.’

She stared at him over the table. ‘Okay, that’s it. Game’s over.’

Leaning her cue against the pool table, she walked back to the two guys and the woman and sat down. She was obviously explaining to the others what he’d said. Everyone looked over.

He kept on playing. He was on a roll. When he looked up from his first shot Johnno was standing glaring at him from the other side of the table. The other guy was backing him up.

‘Mate, it’s not a good idea to come in here looking for trouble.’

‘That right?’

‘We reckon you’d better leave now.’

‘I haven’t finished my game.’

Johnno reached over and picked up the black ball and put it into the nearest pocket, where it rattled away down
hidden chutes. ‘Game’s over now.’

Box straightened up. He shook his head. ‘You ruined my game.’

‘So what?’

‘So now you owe me two bucks.’

Box was surprised when Johnno reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a two-dollar coin. He tossed it into the middle of the green felt. Box reached forward and took the coin, slipped it into his pocket.

‘I’ve got a joke you fellas might not have heard. What do you call a Maori with a Range Rover?’

‘Fuck off,’ said the other guy, the one whose name Box didn’t know.

‘Go on, take a guess.’

‘You better leave now, mate,’ said Johnno.

‘Make me, tough guy.’

Box changed his grip on the pool cue so that he could swing the fatter heavier end. The table was still between him and the two men. Johnno came up on the balls of his feet. He glared across the table at Box.

‘Why are you trying to push me into a fight?’

Box admired his control. A lot of men would have just let the adrenaline take over at that point, engaged their brains again only when they’d won — or were being carted off to the local emergency room.

‘You’re not worth getting in the shit over,’ said Johnno.

He turned and walked back to the table. The other man paused for a moment, then followed. Nobody looked at Box as the two women got up and put on their jackets. They all left through a side door.

Box took one more shot, cleanly sank the red in the corner pocket, rested the cue on the table and, ignoring
the small alcohol-muted voice of reason starting up in his head, followed them outside.

The car park at the south side of the hotel was an unlighted square of sparse shingle and unpaved, potholed dirt. The only light came from a bare bulb over the side door of the building. When Box came out into the night air the four of them were already sitting in their car. It was a dark Subaru, nosed up against the wooden fence opposite where he was standing, with no other cars around it, beyond the reach of the single bulb’s weakly thrown light. It was still raining half-heartedly, the languid drops visible only as they drifted through the light, disappearing again before they nestled into the patchy ground.

The engine was running when Box opened the front passenger door. The woman he’d played pool with was in the front seat. She swung her head around and made a small surprised sound, a high hiccup in her throat. Box was sorry to see that she was afraid.

Johnno was behind the wheel. He looked past the woman’s shocked face and anemone hair at Box. ‘Jesus! What’s your fuckin problem?’

‘There was something I forgot to say to the lady.’

Box bent down and whispered a few words in the woman’s ear. She leaned away from him.

‘Fuck! That’s it!’ yelled the guy in the back seat.

He was sitting behind the woman, on Box’s side of the car, and Box heard the click of the door opening. Box pulled his head out of the car and stepped back. He let the guy get his door open and one foot on the ground.
When the other man’s weight was forward and his head down, Box kicked the door as hard as he could. The young Maori tried to stop it with his arm but Box had planted his shoe as wide on the door as he could, where the leverage would be the greatest, and put his full weight into the kick. The inside of the door made a solid wooden thunk as it collected the guy’s head and shoulder. He let out a deep grunt. Three steps took Box around the door. He pushed it back, out of the way. With the guy dazed and sagging half out of the car Box got in two big hits: the first an uppercut to his face and the next to the side of the head, above the ear. The guy cried out in pain and fell forward onto a patch of shingle, clutching his face.

From the back of the car the second woman began to scream.

Box saw movement out of the corner of his right eye. Johnno had come around the front of the car in the gap between the grille and the wooden fence. Box turned to face him just as Johnno threw a wild hooking right. Box instinctively flinched back and away but the other man’s fist caught him on the edge of the face, bare knuckles grinding in against his eye socket. Box rolled his head and shoulder, going with the punch. He sensed rather than saw the other man step in close and try to land an uppercut. By some fluke it missed his jaw, the fist scraping past his ear. Box was under no delusions that if Johnno’s knuckles had connected properly he would’ve found himself on the ground.

Box reached out and grabbed a fistful of blue T-shirt. He heard the material stretch and tear before he felt himself wrapped in a clinch. Box smelled the other man’s breath; yeasty beer and pub chips, tomato sauce. Johnno grunted
in his ear. And then a hard blow pounded into Box’s back ribs, just above his kidney.

The woman was still screaming from the back seat of the car. The noise was an air-raid siren in his ears.

Box jerked his right knee up as hard as he could, aiming for the denim tunnel up between the other man’s legs. He got lucky, felt the top of his knee hit home and the mash of the other man’s scrotum as his balls were driven up hard against his pelvic bone.

Johnno moaned in Box’s ear, ‘Cunt.’ And then he released his grip on Box’s clothes and folded to the ground. He curled in a ball and lay on the stones, making short canine pants.

Box stood over him. The adrenaline rush from the fight was still there, muscles twitching, heart thudding like a crazed blacksmith’s hammer against the anvil of his chest, all mixing together with the heady timeless warmth of the beer, the primitive joy of victory. Box looked towards the side door of the pub; no one had come out. Inside the building music was still playing. The played-at-every-good-party sound of Jordan Luck and the Exponents singing ‘Victoria’ spilled out into the car park. He could hear loud laughter from inside.

This, he thought, is what these blokes’ ancestors must have felt like after battling each other with stone clubs and spears. Hell, his own ancestors must have fought and killed each other too. When you thought about it, they must have. Otherwise he probably wouldn’t be here today.

The guy he’d hit in the head was moving slightly but he wasn’t trying to sit up yet. Probably wouldn’t for a while. Box had felt the gristle of his nose as it broke and
crumpled sideways against his fist. The two women were still sitting in the car. Thank God the one in the back seat had stopped screaming. Now she was just sobbing loudly. He could live with that.