Settlers' Creek (24 page)

It was just after midday. Box ate his last two gingernuts standing by the hole in the wall that had once been the farmhouse’s front window

Since Deans left Box had achieved very little. The one thing he’d done was use his crowbar to pull away the boards over the window. The nails had been old and rusted and the wood had come free without much fight. Now warm sunlight angled into the room. It wouldn’t last long, though; the shadows were on the march. He sipped fresh tea out of the lid of the Thermos while he thought.

Box didn’t want another night in this valley. It was time to go. He’d take his chances driving back to the bay today.

‘The question is, how long will they be watching the roads?’

And then later, ‘It’s the ute they’ll be looking for. What I need’s a car.’ He was talking to Mark again. His son’s body lay on the floor in the sunlight. ‘But where are we going to get a car?’

When he’d finished the last biscuit in the packet and the cup in his hand was empty, he carried Mark out to the ute and slipped him as gently as he could onto the deck.

‘Sorry, mate. Another day or two.’

He lifted lengths of old timber from the same spot next to the house where he’d found the manuka for the fire. The edges of the planks were soft and crumbled beneath his hands. The earth underneath them was barren except for a lattice of thick white roots, like cave-blind worms. He carried the wood over to the ute and carefully stacked it around Mark. Slaters scuttled away and dropped onto the metal deck. They ran down the corrugations. A daddy-long-legs as fat as Box’s thumb tumbled onto his boot, and rather than have it run up his leg, he flicked it away with a twitch.

When he had enough wood Box fetched some rusted sheets of corrugated iron; really just holes held together by a frame of metal. They flaked and bled brown into his palms. Onto the top of the whole lot he dragged a long-pronged length of rusted metal to hold it all down; once part of an ancient motorless baler, maybe — but that was just his best guess, and probably wrong. It was heavy anyway, enough to weigh down everything else.

Box carefully stacked the lot around Mark. When he was satisfied, he tied everything down with a criss-crossing of rope and stood back to examine what he’d done. There was no sign of Mark. He was looking at a midden of wood and iron and rusted farm machinery. There was nothing there to warrant a second glance.

It was just a temporary burial, before the real thing. If he made it that far. It was a big if.

He literally stumbled over the original homestead. The ute was already packed and Box was taking the most direct route from the house down to the river to get water for the trip when his foot stuck something hidden deep in the long grass and he staggered forward. He was saved from falling only by doing an awkward flailing hop, skip and a jump. The sudden stretching movement flicked forks of pain along his bruised side. He grunted and stood bent over until the pain passed, his heart going like an irate cat in a cardboard box.

That morning as he dressed he’d examined his side. A fist-sized patch of his skin had turned a typhoidal yellow. It hurt when he breathed and he wondered if he’d cracked a rib.

Box had kicked a large stone that had been burnt black. He pulled away grass to reveal several more, similar to the first. It took him a while to realise that he was looking at the remains of a hearth. Flattening and grubbing up the grass with his boots he uncovered rough wooden foundations. It was more a room than a house: kitchen, dining, bedroom, all in one — only about four metres square all up.

Box came back to where he’d started. He crouched down and ran his hands over the blackened edges of the hearth stones. He wondered what had made a family decide to come here — not just to a whole new country on the other side of the world but to here, to this shadowed valley surrounded by mountains. Box raised his head and looked up at the slopes thick with bush. It was possible that whoever first worked this land had bought it sight unseen. Maybe they used their life’s savings, or a meagre
inheritance, to pay a deposit even before they walked up the gangplank for the three-month journey by ship.

He tried to imagine their first waking. Opening tired eyes to examine their new home, their future. This: a rugged shadowed valley that would need to be back-breakingly cleared, and then recleared, before anything like a farm could be stamped onto it. It was half a day’s ride on horseback to the coast. Another day down to Kaipuna.

He wondered how many years it had been before the first settlers had been able to raise their own food or build up a flock of sheep large enough to earn a living from. He also wondered how many years those people had lived crammed in this tiny house (and before that under canvas, probably). Had it been the children of the settlers, married off by then, perhaps, who’d built the bigger house up towards the road?

Box searched around for a bit longer, hoping to find a toppled headstone or even a rotted wooden cross. There was nothing as obvious as a graveyard, not that he could find anyway. He imagined that they would have died young and tragically in accidents. Or when they were older, their bodies worn down by the sheer hard work of carving a living from the land. Probably when they did die, their bodies were carted down to the church at Kaipuna for a proper send-off. If they were buried around here whatever markers had been left on the graves had been covered by the regenerating bush. With no one around to keep the green tangle at bay the matagouri and bush lawyer could have easily swallowed them up. If that was what had happened, then Box wouldn’t have a virgin’s show at an orgy of finding them. He turned and went back to the ute.

As he drove away from the house and the riverflats he had to cross the ford again. If anything, the water was lower than the day before and the Toyota crossed easily. The load behind him creaked and whispered with rusty voices as it settled.

‘COOKED CRAYS’. The drip-tailed capital letters were daubed in white paint on a piece of wood that had been nailed to a lamppost on the side of the highway.

Box’s stomach turned over just looking at the two words. A hundred metres further up the road he got a passing flash of a caravan parked at the back of a shingle lay-by, with the blue of the ocean behind.

It took him two ks to make up his mind.

‘What the hell,’ he said to Mark, slowing and pulling the ute over onto the shingle verge. ‘You only live once, eh.’ He thought about what he was saying. And who he was saying it to. Box wasn’t sure whether to crack up or break down. In the end he settled for just holding it together.

He waited for a big sheep truck to pass. It silently filled his wing mirror, getting larger and larger. And then it was suddenly, shockingly, there; thundering past just a couple
of metres from his open window, sucking the air along with it and filling the void in its wake with the stink of hot wool and sheep piss blasted directly into his nostrils through the open window. Before it was past Box had a flickering view of the sheep through the slatted sides of the truck. The dark bare noses, bodies crushed together, white eyes bulging from the sides of their long faces. Headed to the abattoir, he thought.

He could still smell the sheep truck as he did a big u-turn on the highway and drove back to where he’d glimpsed the caravan. He needed to eat. Most of all he needed to fill his belly if he hoped to get back to the city, taking the inland route through Ashford. He’d never got around to cooking those beans and driving dizzy-headed from lack of food was most likely going to see him end up in a ditch somewhere with a broken axle. Or with the ute wrapped around a tree and two dead bodies on board, instead of one.

Years of sun and wind and salt spray had bleached the metal exterior of the caravan the colour of beach-found bones. Box parked the ute as far away as he could and checked the deck and adjusted some of the wood that had moved before walking over. The caravan was chocked up on concrete blocks at the very back of the rest stop, on a lip of land that was as much beach as it was anything else. The salt-hardy weeds growing underneath and the perished, pancake-flat tyres told Box that the caravan hadn’t moved in an age. A rectangle had been cut out of its side high up to create a counter with a sliding window, the glass opaque with salt.

A man came to the counter and peered down at Box. He was mid-sixties at least with red-veined cheeks and a nose that looked sun-cooked. He was wearing an apron that had
written across it ‘Don’t ask me. I only work here’.

‘Gidday. How’s it going?’

‘Good,’ Box lied. ‘How much are you asking for a cray?’

‘I should’ve seen the other guy, right?’

Box lifted his hand to his face and touched the dull throb. ‘Walked into a door.’ Two lies in thirty seconds. And then he felt like a fool for trotting out such a cliché. ‘A couple of days ago,’ he added, ‘on a building site.’

The guy made a show of wincing in sympathy. Contorting his face made the broken labyrinth of red capillaries covering his cheeks squirm. ‘Nasty.’

‘I’ll live.’

‘Where you headed?’

‘North.’

‘Thought I saw you drive past a few minutes ago heading back towards Kaipuna.’

‘How much for a cray?’

‘Depends on the size. I’ll show you.’

The man turned and took three stunted strides to the back of the caravan where a huge chilly-bin with a red lid was sitting up on a counter. The lid fell off with a plastic clatter and he reached inside. Box heard the jingle of ice. When the man turned back he had a cray in his hands. He was holding it by the back of the carapace, the long hooked legs pointing towards Box and plated tail curled up under it. As he put it down on the counter he unfurled the segmented tail so that Box could see the full length. Box guessed that, not counting the long fishing-pole feelers, the creature was a good forty-five centimetres long. One of the legs curled out and back.

‘It doesn’t get any fresher than this,’ said the man, grinning. ‘Caught this morning. The ice just slows ’em down a bit.’

‘How much?’

‘This is the biggest I’ve got today, a really good-sized cray. Do you want it cooked?’

Box nodded. ‘Yeah.’ His saliva was already starting to flow.

‘The whole thing, cooked while you wait, with chips, eighty-five bucks.’ He must have seen Box’s shocked look. ‘That’s cheap compared to what you’d pay in one of those restaurants in Kaipuna.’

Box shook his head. ‘What about for a smaller one?’

‘The smallest will cost you forty.’

Box looked at the big cray on the counter in front of him. Out of the ice it was beginning to move. He watched it flexing its legs and stirring the air in front of it with the string-thin ends of its antennae. Box had only ninety dollars left in his wallet.

‘I’ll take this big fella if you let me have it for sixty.’

The guy grinned. ‘Sixty-five.’

‘Okay. How long will it take?’ He looked towards the ute and the other man followed the line of his gaze.

‘Not even ten minutes.’

‘I’ll have the chips as well.’

‘That’s no extra charge for the big spenders.’

Box went back to the ute and fished out his wallet from the glove box. Three twenties and a ten, and the guy had better have change. As he folded the notes and slid them into his pocket he wondered what the hell he was doing. Even when Saxton Construction was raking it in, Box would’ve thought hard before spending sixty-five bucks on a meal for one that was pretty close to takeaways. He and Liz had tended to eat out at Indian or Thai restaurants, even then, when money wasn’t an issue. There was a Greek taverna they liked to go to for
birthdays or to take the staff to at Christmas. But sixty-five for what was essentially fish and chips at the side of the road — he must be going soft.

Even so, he walked back to the caravan and slipped the notes across the counter.

The man grinned and handed five dollars back to Box. ‘How’s the building business?’

‘Shot, there’s nothing on. How about you?’

‘We’re feeling the downturn a bit, not so many tourists pulling up. And the ones who do are on a budget now. They’re not buying the big crays.’

Box could hear the slow bubbling of boiling water but couldn’t see the stove. ‘Do you catch them yourself?’

‘Sure do. I’ve got a small quota.’

‘Out here?’ Box nodded towards the back wall of the caravan and the ocean behind it.

‘Up and down the coast,’ he said vaguely.

Box guessed that the best spots to set cray pots were a closely guarded secret.

‘I take the old girl out twice a day to check the pots, morning and night if the weather lets me.’

Looking past the edge of the caravan Box could see a fibreglass boat drawn up on the shingle beach, not much more than an overgrown dinghy. The boat had the name
Sweet Lily
painted near the bow, which was attached to a cable that made a taut line in the air above the shingle up to a winch. The winch was set in concrete at the top of the beach, the metal pitted and rusted oxblood red.

‘You’re the bloke, aren’t ya?’ The man asked it casually. ‘The fella who caused all the fuss up at the marae.’

‘What fuss was that?’

A sly conspiratorial grin now. ‘Apparently someone took
a body from their meeting house.’ He looked over at the ute. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to tell anyone I saw you. Far as I’m concerned anyone who sticks it to the fucking Maoris is doing a good job.’

Box watched the man scoop frozen chips out of large bag into a basket. He heard the hiss of hot oil. He thought about denying it but he was sick of lying. It made him feel cheap. ‘They stole my son’s body right out of the funeral parlour. I’m just bringing him home.’

‘Good on ya. It’s about time someone stood up to them. Everyone’s always kissing their brown arses. The government gives them money hand over fist. Fucking treaty settlements — nothing but handouts. Round here they’ve bought up everything. There’s nothing left for normal people like us.’

Box shifted his feet on the ground and looked towards the highway. ‘I just wanted my son back.’

But the cray guy was on a roll, wasn’t close to listening. ‘Before Captain Cook discovered this country the Maoris were a Stone Age fucking culture, mate. That’s a fact. They hadn’t even invented the wheel. They had no reading or writing. They ran around all day fighting other tribes and then the winners ate the losers. Tell that to the Maoris and they call you racist, but it’s a fact. Instead of moaning all the time they should be thanking us white fellas for showing up when we did. They’re all a hundred times better off than they were back then.’

‘How’s that cray going?’

‘There’s a lot of people around think the same way as me. People are just afraid to say it, that’s all. It’s not politically correct, you know. You’re going to be a bit of a bloody hero, I reckon.’

‘I’ve got nothing against Maori. My son at least looked half Maori.’

The man frowned, confused. ‘Oh come on, mate. You of all people have got to see what’s going on.’

‘All I know is that a guy named Tipene and some of his friends took my son. I’m just getting him back home.’

The guy grunted deep down in his throat. ‘Yeah, but it’s bigger than that, isn’t it? You’ve got to see that.’

‘All I care about is my son.’ Box looked the man in the eyes. ‘Sometimes, it’s nothing except personal.’

The man licked his lips and his eyes flicked about. He lifted meaty shoulders up towards his ears. ‘Fair enough.’ He turned and became busy. Box heard the rattle of the cooked chips being shaken.

Box stepped back from the counter and walked to the end of the caravan. He stood in the bright sunlight and listened to the waves breaking on the shingle. It was a calm day and the sea was smooth except for widely spaced swells moving towards the shore.

‘Here ya go,’ the man called at last.

Box walked back and found that a white paper parcel was thrust towards him. In the man’s other hand were four notes. He held them out towards Box.

‘It’s on the house.’

Box shook his head. ‘No, thanks. I want to pay.’

The man’s eyes narrowed and then he shrugged again. ‘Suit yourself. Good luck to you, though. If any of those pricks ask, I haven’t seen ya.’

Box took the warm parcel and turned away without replying.

There were still two full bottles behind the driver’s seat, his last two — warmish, but beer. He carried the lot over to a sun-blanched picnic table resting unevenly on the deep shingle at the top of the beach, well away from the caravan.

Before Box even sat down half a dozen gulls were already massing along the top of the caravan, eyeing him up. When he ripped open the packet, trying not to burn his fingers on the rush of hot steam, the gulls glided over. They began strutting around on the shingle, fluffing themselves up, jostling for first rights. Box ignored them. Rats with wings, he thought.

He ripped down through the layers of paper until he came to the steaming cray. Boiling had transformed its shell from dark to a flaming dragon’s-belly orange.

Gingerly, he flipped the cray over. All the good meat was in the tail, though some people liked to eat the brownish sludgy offal in the carapace. Box remembered his grandfather scooping the stuff out and spreading it over toast. But to Box a cray was all about the tail. He snapped the thorny upper half from the tail with one wrench and, using fingertips and nails, exposed the soft white and pinched out a thick wad of meat.

To think that only hours ago, out among the roots of the bull kelp beneath the slopping swell, this old fella (old girl?) was edging around the rocks, feelers tasting the ocean. Judging by the size it was an old-timer, probably with a string of descendants. And then one rash decision, and it was all over.

Box placed the first piece of meat in his mouth. It was warm and moist and whatever the opposite of chewy was. The subtle flavour was like nothing else — cray tasted like cray. He took his time, chewing lazily, dissolving the meat
between his tongue and the roof of his mouth, mashing it against his taste buds. Finally he swallowed.

Box cracked open the beer and took a long swig, which fizzed down after the meat. He needn’t have worried, the beer was cold enough: perfect, in fact, with the warm flesh. He turned his face to the sun for a moment and closed his eyes, feeling the growing heat on his skin.

And then got down to some serious eating.

When he’d finished, the top of the table was littered with cracked shell and every last finger-scooped skerrick of edible flesh in the tail was gone. He’d cracked open the legs and sucked out the straws of tasty meat hidden inside. Every last chip was gone as well. They’d been golden and crisp. And not a single one for the bloody gulls. Most of them had flown off. Only the die-hards watched him balefully. It had been a feast. A feast worthy of a king. Or a prisoner’s last meal. It didn’t pay to think about that last one too much.

He stuffed his rubbish into the bin by the table and walked back to the ute. The cray seller was watching him. Well, let him watch. I’ve got bigger things to worry about than you, mate.