Settlers' Creek (27 page)

When Box finally rolls the stolen car down off the hills and into Regent’s Bay he is marrow-sapped, gut-rooted and shattered beyond anything he could have imagined possible.

The drive through the city had been a blur of lights: neon advertising, street lights, lighted shop windows and houses. Next to him cars had waited for the red traffic lights to change. None of the other drivers had so much as glanced at him or his passenger. Everyone in the city, he’d thought, was suffering from a type of blindness.

Box slows as he comes down the slope that ends with the big bend that fish-hooks to the left at the bottom of Turner’s Gully. He knows this road so well that no matter how tired he is he could drive it blindfolded, with nothing to guide him except memory and the dry rumble of the tyres on the tarseal.

In fact, what the hell. He flicks off the car’s lights. And then, on impulse, half turns the key in the ignition. The
engine dies and there’s nothing except the rush of the wind through the open window. There are no street lights down here. With only the moon to see by, Box steers his stolen Jap import down the hill. It appeals to him that they are travelling the last couple of hundred-odd metres like this. The two of them, father and son, coming home in the dark, rolling in, silent and invisible as spies. He’s probably going too fast on the curve but he’s loving it, and buggered if his foot is going anywhere near the brake. Slowly, he straightens the car up on the broad bend. The night air washes over his face.

At the last possible moment Box registers the shadowy agapanthus-lined mouth of the driveway beside the church. He brakes and pulls the car off to the right, still with the lights off. It rolls to a stop on the grass outside the churchyard. The steep-pitched roof of the church is visible as a solid shape silhouetted against the darkness beyond. The tall trees loom over the unseen graves.

In the silence Box can hear his own breathing. What a racket he’s making: a panting uneven rasp that fills the inside of the car, like a seventy-year-old asthmatic. His whole body aches. In the last hour the throbbing from his arm has spread to the rest of his body. He suspects that the blood-soaked sponge of bandage is probably nothing more than decoration now and is glad he can’t see it in the darkness. There are hours before dawn. He has to do what he can in the almost total dark of the cemetery. He will be able to finish off in the first light.

For the moment, though, he sits behind the wheel, savouring the stillness. He knows how it will go later in the day. There will be police. And then there will be lawyers. He figures that, in the end, the lawyers will be the only
ones to benefit from the whole mess, like cockroaches after a nuclear war. When all the bullshit has been flung it’s possible that Mark’s body will be taken back to Kaipuna. He knows that. Tipene may well be able to prove to a judge’s satisfaction that his people’s bond is stronger than Box’s. Certainly Tipene has more money to throw at the case than he and Liz do.

And Box knows beyond a doubt that he doesn’t have it in him to go up there and bring Mark back, not again. This was definitely a one-off.

Outside in the darkness something moves through the dry autumn leaves, making no effort to disguise its progress. Probably a hedgehog or a young possum. Box listens until its noises peter out.

Besides, he’s pretty sure that when the dust settles he’ll find himself in prison. The police will link the arson at the playground to him — and not just arsing around either, eh Box? His grandfather’s joke is loud from the cemetery. Not to mention putting his hands on that old woman on the marae. The law will have a damning name for that — assault? Home invasion? And he won’t argue that he broke into the bach in Ashford. He stole the car. Most of their charges will be fair enough. No, Box won’t fool himself, he’s definitely broken the law. He won’t be around to look after Liz or Heather, not for a while. Not for the first time, he’s grateful that he married a strong woman.

‘It’s time now,’ he says to Mark.

Box takes his hunting knife in its sheath from the seat next to him, opens the door and struggles up out of the car. His body has damn near ossified into the shape of the driver’s seat. He straightens slowly, feeling his fused spine and his hamstrings, short and hard. Everything aches,
from his arse to his eyeballs. Even the joints in his toes feel sore.

He tucks the knife into the hollow at the base of his back, opens the back door of the car and pulls out his son’s body, head first. He’s a full day and at least half a litre of blood beyond being able to carry Mark. Box is forced to walk backwards dragging his son, fingers wrapped around the tie-down that’s holding the stained blanket in place around the boy’s neck.

Box slowly drags his load through the open gate into the cemetery. He’s forced to stop and rest every few metres. He’s operating in near total darkness, more by feel and sound and memory than anything. He senses rather than sees the gravestones rising up, the close-pressed, staggered rows of them all around. He stops again, and rasps down the cold night air. He’s as weak as a baby.

At last he succeeds in dragging Mark out from the heavy gloom beneath the big trees onto the open lawn behind the church. The same moon that had helped him in Ashford is lost behind the rim of the caldera, but now that he’s out from under the trees there’s at least some type of residual moonlight, enough anyway for Box to distinguish the hills from the lesser black of the starry sky.

With the last of his strength, Box drags Mark over the dew-wet grass to the top of the cemetery. The moisture helps. The blanket slips over the surface. The boy’s grave had been dug for the funeral. Next to the hole there’s a large mound of dirt covered with a tarpaulin weighed down with bricks along its edges. He can’t see the bottom of the hole in the darkness. Box lays Mark down next to the grave and collapses by his side onto the grass.

He stares up at the night sky, breathing heavily, every
fibrous muscle aching. There are no clouds and what heat there was in the earth has risen up long ago.

Box begins to cry at last. He sobs uncontrollably. Tears run down his cheeks, breath clouding in front of his face. His body rolls and shakes, gripped by an earthquake of despair and anger and physical pain and fear. And strangely he can add relief to the list — that he’s so close to the end.

Box gets to his knees. He throws aside the bricks from the tarpaulin and wraps it tightly around himself like a stiff skin cloak. Once he’s wrapped up Box lies down again, next to the body of his son. He speaks to the night sky.

‘Look at us, Tiger. One dead Saxton and one almost dead.’

Box talks on and on, almost jabbering, nonsense mostly, words that he can’t recall as soon as they leave his mouth. At times he’s sobbing, the words choked off; other times he’s laughing, and then shouting open-mouthed obscenities into the darkness. He apologises for things he has done that may have hurt the boy. He recalls smacks and angry words.

Over and over again he asks Mark why? Why had it come down to the hill and the pine tree and the rope?

After a long time — he has no idea whether it is one hour or three — his emotions seem to slow to a trickle and then dry up.

In the last moments before sheer exhaustion forces him down into sleep, Box fully expects to see Paul and Pop, Augustus and anyone else from down the line who cares to join them. He looks for them near the bottom of the slope, among the old graves. That is where they will come from, he is sure — up past the black arches of Pop
and Paul’s headstones. Box finds himself actually looking forward to seeing them. They don’t frighten him. He feels now as if he knows them. More than that, in some way he believes that he has earned a place among their number.

But when Box raises his head and stares red-eyed into the darkness of the churchyard, there’s nothing but the cold night and the outline of the church and the old gravestones.

At long last, still waiting, drained of all tears, Box is found only by a deserved and dreamless sleep.

Box wakes with the first tentative half-light that precedes dawn. Before he even opens his eyes he can smell the damp earth of the churchyard and hear the first stirrings of the birds in the tops of the big trees. He knows exactly where he is and what he has to do, but for a minute he lies still. Dew has settled on the tarpaulin and lies as quivering balls of mercury. His hair is damp. He’s slept on his back, something he never does, with his face burrowed into the protective overhang of the tarp.

To unbundle himself, Box is forced to roll sideways, careful to move away from the open grave. He imagines the black farce that could follow if he found himself at the bottom of a sheer-sided pit: six feet under.

He sheds the tarpaulin and struggles to his feet. Out in the Pacific the sun will soon be cracking the long horizon. Shortly after that the first rays will strike the top of the caldera behind him, lighting the tussock and the dark
outcrops of volcanic rock. Box stamps his feet and flaps his good arm against his side. Even through the heavy canvas tarpaulin the dampness of the earth has seeped up into his body. He is chilled and blood-cold as if he’s turned into one of the skinks that he and Paul used to hunt as boys. If he had the time he would be quite happy to stretch out naked on a rock and wait for the sunlight to warm up his blood. There’s no time, though. He has to hurry.

‘I’ll have this off in a sec. Don’t worry. She’s been pulled pretty tight.’

His stiff fingers probe and tug at the tie-down holding the stained woollen blanket around his son’s throat. He pulls away the tie-down and throws it onto the grass but leaves the blanket draped over the boy’s face. When all three tie-downs are off, he unwraps the blanket from around Mark’s body.

It’s the first time he’s seen Mark since the marae. Jesus. He’s not ready for the changes, for the damage, for the ravages, the desecration, that has been done. That
he
has done. A choking sob catches in his throat like a piece of raw steak.

‘I’m so sorry, Mark. But it’s almost over. There’s just one more thing I have to do.’

Box unbuttons Mark’s stained shirt. Fumble fingered, he starts at the top button and works his way to the bottom. When the material is peeled back he’s again confronted by the puckered autopsy scar. The skin is grey and bloodless. Mark’s chest and stomach are darkly mottled with bruises and stains. It’s like one of those shrink’s flash cards — Rorschach cards. Box doesn’t let his eyes focus on the new damage. He’s afraid of what shapes he might see there.

Last night his grandfather’s hunting knife had lain next
to him inside the tarp. Now he checks the blade. He has nothing to sharpen it with but he checks it anyway, out of habit. It’s good enough.

First he uses the knife to cut a jagged square out of the corner of the tarpaulin. It cuts easily through the heavy material. When he’s finished he puts the square down on the grass.

Kneeling down next to his son’s body, Box takes a deep breath, then sets to work. He uses the knife without hesitation or conscious thought, just as his grandfather had taught him on that first hunting trip into the mountains.

Even before Box switches off the Nissan’s engine, Dee is coming out of the house to meet him. She wears her dressing gown over heavy flannelette pyjamas. Her feet are bare. It’s still very early, though Box has been awake for over two hours. Only the tips of the poplars are dipped in sunlight. The house and the drive are still pooled in shadow and the overgrown macrocarpa hedge is a dark wall. Dee comes padding down off the veranda looking tired and sad and more frail than he remembers her, even though you could count the hours since he’d last been here.

Box pushes open the car door and lurches up out of the seat. Once he’s standing he has to lean against the cold metal of the car to stop himself from falling. It’s pleasantly cool against his forehead. And then Dee is there, wrapping her arms around him, talking, crying, scolding. Box is reassured that he’s still human enough to feel embarrassed about the way he must look, how he must pong. Even though he’s washed off the worst of it at the tap outside
the church, his hands and his knees are still ingrained with the dirt he’s been shifting for the last hour. His boots have mud clinging to them. Also, there are things that he hopes his grandmother won’t see that are flecked over his clothes. But there’s not a lot he can do about any of that now.

‘Box,’ she says and then, ‘Oh Box, Box, Box.’

Dee hugs him hard, her arms around the outside of his, pinning them to his sides. He’s amazed by her strength. Or, more likely, he’s become so weak himself that an old lady like Dee could beat him into submission with her handbag. Box bends his head low to rest it on her shoulder. Her arm slides down the sleeve of his muddy bush shirt onto his injured forearm. He shudders and pulls back.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘No, just a cut. It will be fine.’

‘You look awful.’

‘Thanks.’ A weak smile.

‘You’ve been in a fight.’

‘Something like that.’

‘Let me look at it. I’ve got some Dettol and a plaster in the bathroom.’

‘I think it’s going to need a bit more than that, Dee.’

‘Come inside. Let me see.’

‘Soon. There’s something I’ve got to do first.’ Suddenly light-headed, he sways.

‘Box, you need to get to a doctor.’

‘Later.’

‘What do you have to do?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’

‘I’ll come with you then. You look like you might fall over at any moment.’

‘No. Sorry, but when they ask where it is, it will be better
if you don’t know.’

‘Where what is? What are you talking about, Box?’

‘Can I borrow a plastic bag?’

Dee doesn’t even bother asking why he needs a bag. She turns and goes back inside. Box must have closed his eyes because he’s unaware of any wait. She’s just beside him again, holding out a white supermarket bag.

She watches as he takes something from the front seat of the Nissan and puts it carefully into the bag.

‘What’s that?’

‘I won’t be long, Dee. Maybe an hour.’

‘I’ll be waiting.’

He kisses her cheek and tries to squeeze out a smile, but he suspects that it comes out as a lopsided grimace, more worrying than reassuring.

Box can feel Dee’s eyes stuck to him as he walks over the lawn towards the back of the house, the plastic bag hanging heavy from his good hand. When he’s at the edge of the orchard he turns and raises his hand. Dee waves back. She’s crying.

At the toolshed, Box opens the door and goes into the dim and jumbled interior perfumed by two-stroke and grease and the split bag of dry potting mix by the door. He finds the spade hanging on the back wall. The handle is oak and he can see the speckled grain and smell the linseed oil his grandfather used to rub lovingly into it after every use. Box takes the spade down and goes out into the light again.

Walking down to the creek, one doubtful foot in front of the other, is a marathon effort. As a boy it was a distance he could have covered in a minute flat. Now he has to stop and lean on the spade several times, breathing hard,
his whole body throbbing. Box knows that he’s finished — empty-tanked, almost dead himself, in pain, dizzy and nauseous. And yet strangely it occurs to him, even while he’s limping towards the creek, that he feels more at ease than he’s done in a long time — maybe even since Paul died. The feeling has been growing, washing over him like a tepid sea, since he’d rolled silently into the bay in the crisp unscented dark of early morning.

Another rest stop. He stands breathing heavily through his mouth and rests on his grandfather’s spade. He looks around. Dee was right. There is history in this place. History that you can’t buy, or reproduce. The creek and the encircling hills, the long stretch of the harbour east, the tucked-away beaches, the outcrops and the old houses, the trees like the ones in front of him now, the secret paths, the patches of native bush, the planted and the fallow earth — they all have stories embedded in them. Stories that had been laid down like sediment by generations: by fathers and mothers working the land, by grandparents and children, all living and dying here, all the way back down the line to the first arrivals. And not just the Saxtons — the Turners, the Harbidges and the Marshalls. All the old families were woven together. They had no other place to call home.

Box straightens. He hoists the spade and lumbers on.

He falls crossing the creek. As he lands hard on the algae-slick stones the spade twists out of his hand and finds a deep pool. Only the oak handle is poking above the tea-coloured water. Box lies face down on the stones. A leaf drifts slowly past close to his face. He can hear the water flowing under him and past him, singing its lullaby. He watches the leaf navigating between brown rocks and
thinks about going to sleep right there in the shadow-blanketed bed of the creek.

Box pushes with his hands on the rocks, groans and staggers to his feet. There’s a new pain in his left knee — another to add to his collection. The plastic bag is resting on the stones nearby, out of the water. He picks it up and checks inside. The rough square of stained tarpaulin he’d cut in the cemetery is still there. What’s wrapped inside is safe.

He fishes the spade out of the hole and carries on. One foot in front of the other, each stage of the journey tackled one at a time.

There’s a place, up on the crest of the first hill, below the rim of the caldera, near the back of his people’s land. From up there the harbour is visible all the way to the heads as a long unbroken highway. The Pacific Ocean is beyond. It’s a spot he liked going to as a kid. He used to tramp up there sometimes just for the hell of being alone and being able to see almost his whole known world. Sometimes he’d go up with Paul, but mostly when he went there Box had been alone.

The exact spot he has in mind for what he’s going to do is just in front of a small stand of half a dozen kowhai trees. In the spring they flower bright yellow. Behind the trees is a cathedral of soft volcanic rock, an outcrop that towers up and deflects the wind and soaks the sun into its pores. When the sun goes in the afternoon the rock continues to give off heat.

On a clear sunny morning like this he will be able to
see the whole of their land from there: the creek, and the bush-filled gully, the orchard and the vegetable garden and the square block of the old farmhouse. If the sun is at the right angle he might see the reflection of the sunlight off the glasshouses. Autumn mist may be hanging in patches as the sun warms the earth.

It’s in that spot, at the foot of the kowhai trees, that he will bury what he’s carrying safe in the bag in his hand. He will use his grandfather’s spade to dig a deep hole in the earth. He will bury his son’s red heart where it belongs.

Box Saxton clambers up the far bank of the creek. Somehow he gets over the sagging fence. He emerges from the cool shadows of the trees into the bright morning sunlight. The thought comes to him with certainty that this will be the last really good day of autumn. There’s no wind and he can feel the sunlight on his shoulders. Blinking in the bright light, he stops to muster what little strength he has left. The grass around his feet is as high as his knees. The hill he must climb is in front of him.

Box takes a deep shuddering breath down into his lungs, then starts his broken body off walking for the last time. He moves slowly, the plastic bag and the spade in his one good hand. His feet leave a trampled path through the long yellow grass.