Where Cuckoos Call (12 page)

I rolled it into a tube, climbed down the ladder and tied it to Peg’s collar. I gave her a long, hard cuddle.

‘There you go, girl. It’ll be better for you back there than here. Now go, girl. Take this to Mum. Go home, Peg.’

She stood looking at me for a moment. Then she gave a little woof of understanding, turned and disappeared into the black storm.

There’s an old war movie that I once watched called
The Longest Day
. For me, that night was the longest night. At times I thought it would never end.

However, it was not all bad. When I returned to Treetops and climbed into the lookout, I found I had company. Bigmouth was sitting on one of her perches. She must have flown in at the start of the storm. I was pleased to see her. When I thought of all the things she’d survived, I gained hope. Together we could get through this, and Dad would be OK.

For the first hour or two, the yellow light from the tractor showed me what was happening below. The rain was still heavy and driven by a powerful wind. Although the waves were now hitting into the rock barrier, there was little water getting through. If the storm didn’t get much worse, the wall might hold.

But the storm did get worse. I could no longer see, because the tractor lights had failed. I could hear what was happening and feel it, though. The tree was swaying violently, and at times it seemed that Treetops would shake itself to bits.

I checked Dad regularly. His breathing was bad. Sometimes it seemed like minutes would pass between breaths. Several times I thought he had died. Around midnight I lay down beside him, wrapped in the curtains.

Then I started telling him stories. Some of them were repeats of stories he had read to me when I was young. Others I made up as I lay in the darkness. There were also true stories: bits and pieces from my life that I had kept from him, or been too embarrassed to share. And I told him that I loved him. I felt that we were closer then than we’d ever been before.

Eventually the rain stopped, the wind eased and the tree
no longer rocked. Dad’s breathing settled, and I realised that we would get through. When dawn came, I left his side and climbed once again into the lookout. At first there was nothing but dark outlines. I sat with the curtains wrapped around me, fearing what I would soon be able to see.

As it became lighter, I saw that the wall had held, and I became more hopeful. Soon I could see the spit. There were a few small lakes of seawater, but nothing like in other storms. Maybe it had worked. Finally, I could make out the details of the phalarope nest, and my hopes died. The male had gone, leaving behind a messed-up nest with the eggs half-buried in the sand.

I heard Dad’s voice from below. I rushed down and found his eyes open. ‘Did the wall work?’ he asked.

‘Yes. It worked well.’

‘Did it save the nest?’

‘No,’ I replied softly, ‘the eggs have been abandoned.’

He pulled an arm out of the carpet and grabbed my hand, squeezing it tightly. ‘I’m sorry, Ben. I thought together we could do it.’

‘I thought so too, Dad.’

He was silent then. When I knelt to tuck his arm back, I saw that he was crying in his sleep.

Bill Wiltshire’s helicopter arrived just as the sun was rising. I ran down to the beach, waving my arms furiously. A while later the helicopter landed a short distance from the tree. With the rotor still spinning, the pilot and a guy in uniform jumped out and ran towards me.

‘Are you all right?’ asked the uniformed guy.

‘I’m fine. But Dad’s not. He’s up there,’ I pointed to Treetops. He rushed off.

‘How did you know?’ I asked the pilot.

‘Your mum rang Bill the moment the phones came back on. There was something about a dog giving her a message.’

I smiled. ‘That was Peg. I tied a note to her collar. It sounds like she got through.’

‘Yes. Bill tried to get an emergency chopper. But they’re all out. The top half of the North Island is devastated. So he got hold of a paramedic and here we are.’ He reached out and turned me around. ‘You sure you’re all right?’

‘Yeah. Just a bit tired.’

Then the paramedic yelled down from the tree. ‘Give us a hand to get him down, will you?’

It was a slow business, yet it was a lot easier than it had been getting him up there. Between us we finally had Dad strapped into the back seat of the helicopter.

‘Hop in!’ yelled the pilot above the noise of the motor. ‘We’ll go up to the house and see your mother.’

‘No thanks, I’ll walk up.’

‘You can’t. The beach is isolated. You have to come this way.’

As we lifted, I soon saw what he meant. Three more kauri logs had blocked the stream and the kahikatea had fallen on top of them. The resulting dam had then burst, carving a path behind the beach and into the estuary. The channel was so deep and wide it looked like it could be permanent.

Mum was waiting in front of the house. I put my face to the window and waved. She yelled something that I couldn’t hear. Shortly afterwards we had landed and she was reunited with Dad. ‘Oh, Graham, you’re all right. I kept on thinking…Oh, I’m so pleased…Oh…’ I’m not sure how much of this Dad heard. He was slumped to one side, in a coma.

When she had calmed down, I asked her about Peg. ‘She was wonderful. She kept scratching at the door until I opened
it. At first I couldn’t see the note. But she kept pushing her head against my leg and then I saw it. After I read it I went to bring her inside, but she had gone. Did she get back to you?’

I shook my head.

‘Then where did she go?’

That was what I wanted to find out. I was beginning to fear for her.

Mum didn’t want to be separated from Dad, but we couldn’t all fit in the helicopter. I quickly volunteered to stay. At first this idea was rejected, until the pilot said, ‘After what he’s been through last night, I think he can look after himself.’

The paramedic still wasn’t sure. However, after a full examination, he declared me fit enough to be by myself. ‘Just get yourself some food and then go to bed. We’ll come back when we get your father sorted.’

‘It could be a couple of hours,’ said the pilot. ‘You make sure you go to bed.’

I nodded, but I had no intention of going to bed. Not yet: I had to find Peg. Before they had even left, I was inside putting on dry clothes. Even though it was a sunny day, I was feeling shivery. I think it was the thought of what could have happened to Peg.

She wasn’t at the kennel, or in any of her favourite places around the house. I never really expected her to be. Mum was right: she would have tried to get back to me.

I moved down the ridge, calling all the time. When I got to the new stream cutting, I could go no further. There was still so much water that it would be dangerous to cross. Yet I didn’t think she was on the other side. If she’d got over there, she would have got to the tree. No, she was either on this side, or…I didn’t want to think about that. I knew she would have tried to get back to me. She could swim, so she would have thought it OK to cross. Yet at that time the water would have
been a raging torrent—she must have been washed away.

I headed back to the house to get some sleep. I did what the paramedic had ordered and had something to eat before going to bed. But sleep wouldn’t come. I couldn’t stop thinking about Peg. Had I looked in the right places? Could she be so badly injured that she couldn’t answer my call? After a while, I knew I could not rest until I’d made certain.

This time I was going to look everywhere. To make it quicker, I decided to take our ute. I’d never driven it before, but surely it couldn’t be much different from driving the tractor? Plus I’d take Jake, as he was more likely to find Peg than I was.

Driving the ute
was
a lot harder than driving the tractor. After numerous stalls and many kangaroo hops, I eventually got it moving and set off to recheck the area by the channel.

‘Where’s Peg?’ I called to Jake. ‘Find Peg.’

He stopped screaming around and began sniffing. A couple of times he got Peg’s scent, but it led to the channel and stopped. Next we moved on to the mud flats. This was much harder going, as they were strewn with rubbish, some of it quite big. Jake turned up a dead wild pig and two dead possums, but no sign of Peg.

We went all around the mud to the northern side. While there was even more stuff there, none of it was hiding Peg. I stopped the ute near the mouth of the estuary and sat thinking for a while. There was only one conclusion I could come to—Peg had been washed out to sea. If that was the case, there was nothing more I could do here. I turned the ute towards home, and as I did a flash of colour caught my eye. It was Tiny-M feeding on the sandbank! I was thrilled to see her alive. Maybe if T-Boy had also survived, then…Suddenly my thoughts took a U-turn when I realised I hadn’t searched the sandbank. There was plenty of rubbish there that could shelter Peg.

I parked the ute and, with Jake swimming alongside, waded
the hundred metres or so out to the bank. As soon as his feet touched the ground, the dog took off. This was no random searching. This time he definitely knew where he was heading. When he got to a large log, he stopped and started barking. I picked my way through the rubbish with my heart pounding in anticipation. He’d found her—but would she be alive? Oh, she had to be, she just had to be.

Jake was staring at a mound covered in debris. Frantically, I pulled back the rubbish. My heart was thumping so hard I could hear it beat. Yet I soon knew it wasn’t Peg. It was too big and there were clothes. This was a human. I quickly peeled back the rubbish until the whole body was exposed. I didn’t recognise the face, but I did know those clothes—it was Yamaha.

I could only guess how he’d got there. Like Peg, he must have tried to cross the stream, somewhere up in the bush, maybe. Who knows what had happened to his bike? One thing I did know, he wasn’t going to worry me again. I’d never seen a dead person before, but to me, he looked dead.

Then, just to prove me wrong, he let out a low moan. It was so faint that at first I thought I’d imagined it. When it happened a second time, I bent down and put my hand to his mouth. ‘Yes!’ I hissed. ‘You’re alive.’ I could feel the warmth of air being exhaled. He was alive, but only just.

The first thing I did was to check for injuries. The only visible sign was something wrong with his hip. His leg stuck out at a strange angle. I decided that shifting him without help would be foolish. He was probably as safe there as anywhere. It was best for me to go back to the house and wait for the helicopter.

I took off my jacket and placed it over him. Then I carefully replaced the rubbish. It wasn’t much of a bed, but I couldn’t do any better with what I had. On the way back, I thought of
the other bikers. Where were they? Were they also injured, or had Yamaha gone out by himself? One thing was clear, they wouldn’t bother me again, not now after I’d saved their mate.

I don’t know how long I slept. I sat on the sofa waiting for the helicopter to come, and the next thing I knew I was being shaken by the paramedic. A few minutes later we were in the helicopter on the short trip to the estuary. The pilot did a pass over the sandbank, looking for a suitable place to land. As we banked over Lizard Island, he pointed to the pile of rubbish on the estuary side. There was something yellow in amongst all the black.

‘His helmet,’ I yelled.

‘Yeah!’ nodded the pilot. ‘He was lucky he didn’t end up there as well, or you would never have found him.’

‘I’m surprised he didn’t. Just about everything gets washed up there.’

The rescue was a slow business, with the paramedic insisting that he immobilise the biker’s leg before moving him. When it was done, Yamaha was squeezed into the back seat of the helicopter and bound into place. Before leaving, the paramedic gave me another physical check, and once again declared me fit enough to look after myself. He wasn’t happy about this, but with Yamaha taking up all the back seat there was not enough room for all of us, so I was left standing on the sandbank as the helicopter lifted and disappeared over the mountains.

Mum rang as I was microwaving some spaghetti for dinner. She sounded as tired as I felt. She said that Dad was comfortable and in a drug-induced coma. The doctors thought he’d had bleeding in the brain—they would know more after some scans. She told me to make sure I locked all the doors
and windows before I went to bed, as she didn’t want any more disasters.

That evening the news was all about the storm. The devastation was worst on the Coromandel. Two people had died when their cars had been washed away by the floods. The whole of the coastline from Thames up was awash with rubbish that had sluiced down from the ranges.

Mansfield Bay was mentioned in the second segment. There were no pictures, just a report that a man and a youth had been taken to Auckland hospital by a private helicopter belonging to property magnate Bill Wiltshire. Both patients were in a stable condition.

That night I slept on the sofa with the TV on to keep me company. I didn’t want to be left alone with my thoughts. I lay awake thinking of the futility of it all. I had set out to protect T-Boy and the eggs, and had failed. More than that, my actions had almost killed two people. I worried about Dad. The only image I could see was of him attacking the bikers with the tractor. That man had been insane. Was that what he would be like from now on? Had my actions finally tipped him over the edge?

And then there was Peg. How I wished she was still with me. I wouldn’t have needed the TV on for company. She would have climbed up onto the sofa and stretched out beside me. I would have put my arm over her and enjoyed the wonderful warmth of her body.

But now, that could never be. I had lost everything—the eggs, the bay, and the most wonderful friend I’d ever had. I was crying by the time I fell into a troubled sleep.

What a difference a night’s rest can make.

I went to sleep feeling nothing but despair, and woke with my head filled with possibilities. Sometime during the night I had replayed the events of the previous day, and there I had found hope. First, Tiny-M was still alive, and I could see no reason why T-Boy wasn’t also. Then there was Peg. I hadn’t searched everywhere at all. I’d remembered what I had said to the pilot as we flew over Lizard Island: ‘…everything gets washed up there.’ That’s where I would find her.

With the dinghy loaded into the back of the ute, I headed for the spit. I left Jake at home. He would have been useful in the search, but impossible in the boat.

The flow of water from the channel was no more than what the stream normally carried, and was easily crossed by the ute. While there was still no sign of T-Boy, there were plenty of other birds on the spit and lots were sitting on nests. It was great to see that our wall had at least saved some of the birds.

I stood for a while looking at the sea. I almost abandoned the trip then, as the swell was bigger than anything I’d rowed in before. Yet it was possible, and I did want to find Peg. I wanted to find her and tell her how sorry I was.

The first part of getting to Lizard Island was in the calm of the estuary. Then I headed into the incoming tide and ran into the heavy swell. Water spilled over the bow each time the little boat dug into a wave. When I turned for the final approach, the swell now hit the dinghy side on. It was hard to row, keep the boat balanced, and see where I was going all at the same time. Perhaps if I’d taken it a bit slower, I might have been all right. I don’t know. There is always that one wave that is much bigger than all the others.

I had turned to check my direction when the wave hit. The boat lifted for a moment before rolling and dumping me onto a rock. I sensed the dinghy passing over me, before it crashed into the rocks beside me. Then the second wave came, submerging me for a while. When I surfaced, the dinghy had gone. I looked up and saw it floating along with the wave. It was already well on the way back to the estuary.

Somehow I scrambled to the little beach and collapsed onto the sand. All of one side ached where I had hit the rock, yet there didn’t seem to be any permanent damage. I lay on the sand with my eyes closed, thinking about my situation. I was alive and safe, but I was also marooned. The only thing was to wait to be rescued. Sooner or later something would happen when Mum found she couldn’t make contact with me.

It was surprisingly pleasant lying on the beach, letting the sun dry my clothes. I must have dozed off, for I was woken by something moist touching my face. I lifted my hand to wipe it away and felt a hairy snout, like that of a pig. I quickly pulled back my hand and rolled to get away from the thing. Then I opened my eyes and saw that it wasn’t a pig at all. It was Peg, looking at me with a stupid grin, her tail wagging madly. I opened my arms and she jumped into them. I rolled back and forth cuddling her, and laughing and crying with joy. ‘You’re alive!’ I cried. ‘Oh, Peg, I thought you were dead. But you’re alive. You’re alive!’

I will always remember that moment, and not just for the images. I’ll remember the feel of her nose against my face, the warmth of her licking, and the smell of her breath. Oh, I’ll definitely remember
that
smell: it was one of the foulest you could ever get. Later, I found she’d been eating the remains of a dead possum. The thing was so rotten that even the flies had abandoned it. Yet it had probably helped to keep her alive and I was thankful for that—no matter how much she stank.

We spent the rest of the morning playing games, lying on the sand and just enjoying each other’s company. The sun was high in the sky when we heard the helicopter approach. Soon we could see it over the tops of the trees. It was not Wiltshire’s. This was a bigger, yellow one with lettering on the side. As it got closer I saw the words
TV NEWS
.

The helicopter swooped down over the estuary, heading straight towards us. I stood waving my arms and yelling. ‘Help! Help!’ Peg got the message and joined in with her loud, deep bark. The chopper banked when it got to the island, and I saw that the door was open with a TV camera directed at us. Beside the cameraman was the famous Tim Bourke, the man who had interviewed me about the Lapita hoax. My stomach did a few turns when I saw him. He stirred memories that I had hoped to bury.

After doing a couple of circles of the island, the pilot carefully lowered the machine onto the tiny beach. Tim signalled us to get on board, and soon we were in the air moving towards the spit.

We landed on the beach not far from Treetops. The cameraman jumped out and the pilot took the chopper up a bit to repeat the landing so it could be filmed. The camera was still rolling as Tim, Peg and I stepped onto the sand and away from the rotor.

When the motor had stopped, I found Tim beside me with a microphone. ‘How did you get into that predicament, Ben?’

I wasn’t sure what to do. The only time I’d been anywhere near
TV NEWS
it had been a disaster. What was he going to do this time? Pick on me some more? Have another go at the kid who lied? Yet, this could also be my moment. It was an opportunity to talk about the bay and its birds. Maybe the publicity would make a difference.

‘Could you stop filming and turn the microphone off, please?’ I asked in my best mature voice.

He gave me a surprised look, before switching off the mike and signalling the cameraman to stop.

‘Thank you for rescuing us,’ I said. ‘But why did you come here?’

‘We want to do a follow-up story on the storm. Some human-interest stuff. That sort of thing. I hear that you saved some people. We’d like to tell that story.’

I thought for a long time before answering. ‘Yeah, OK. But I tell it my way. I’ll tell you what happened and you can record it. I don’t want you interviewing me and putting words into my mouth, like last time.’

Tim spread his arms as if submitting. ‘Whatever you want. So long as I get a story.’

So we began. I started by saying how important the spit was as a breeding place for birds and why it was important they were protected. I talked about the phalaropes and how Tiny-M had arrived and I’d helped her. Then I led them to the estuary where Tiny-M was feeding in the water. What a show-off she turned out to be. As soon as the camera turned to her, she started her funny feeding routine: swimming gracefully for a while and then tearing around in circles with her head in the water. Tim Bourke couldn’t get enough of it.

Next I took them to Treetops. As soon as I opened the door, I got greeted by one very angry bird. It was Bigmouth. She’d been locked in all the time since we had taken Dad out. She too did a performance, bobbing up and down, calling and generally moaning about things. Again it was all recorded. When she saw I had no food, she gave a final indignant
tseeoo
and flew out the door heading into the bushes.

From the lookout I explained why we had formed the barrier and what it had been like. I just said that Dad had been ill for
some time without going into details, and I didn’t mention the bikers at all.

When I got to the night in Treetops, I closed my eyes, listened to the sea, and told the story as I could still see it. The men remained silent throughout. It was an emotional time for me, and I think they felt it too. When I’d finished I opened my eyes and stood gazing blankly over the spit.

After a time, Tim asked, ‘So where did Darryl fit into all of this?’

‘Who?’

‘Darryl Whitaker. The boy you rescued.’

‘Oh, him,’ I said. ‘I didn’t find him until the afternoon, when I was looking for Peg. I found him on the sandbank there.’ I pointed to the sandbank and the camera dutifully turned and zoomed in on what was left of the rubbish.

‘I visited him in hospital,’ said Tim. ‘He’s a good rugby player. One of the most promising in the schools’ competition. But he won’t be playing for a while after what happened here.’

I waited for him to continue, wondering what story Yamaha had told.

‘He said he’d been out with a couple of mates riding in the bush when they got separated. He was trying to get back when he misjudged crossing a stream and crashed his bike. Next thing he knew he was waking up in hospital.’

Yeah, I thought, and with a hangover I bet. Yet I was pleased that Yamaha had not mentioned the encounter on the beach—nobody could be proud of what had happened there.

The silence that followed was broken by the cameraman. ‘Can you point out where the nest was?’

‘Yeah, there,’ I said, pointing. ‘Just to the left of the driftwood that looks like a cat.’

He panned the camera for a while before focussing on one
spot. ‘OK, I’ve got it now. The one with the broken eggs.’

‘I didn’t know they were broken.’

‘What I’m seeing,’ said the cameraman, ‘is eight empty half-shells.’

My heart skipped a beat. ‘What?’ I asked excitedly. ‘Can I have a look?’

‘Sure.’ He flipped out a LCD screen. ‘Have a look here.’ He was right: there were four half-shells in the nest and another four nearby in the sand. The ones in the nest had tipped so that the round side was up, giving the impression that they were buried.

‘They hatched,’ I whispered to myself. ‘They hatched.’ Then I started yelling it: ‘They hatched! The chicks hatched!’ I danced around hardly able to control myself.

‘So where are they?’ asked Tim.

In answer, Bigmouth flew into Treetops to sit on the window sill and look at us. I knew that look: it was the one she had whenever she’d found something. For a while she looked at me sideways, as if trying to decide whether she should tell me or not. Then with a little bob and a loud tweet, she did a loop outside before returning to the sill. Next, just in case I hadn’t got the message, she went into her full come-and-look-at-what-I’ve-found routine.

‘What’s she doing that for?’ asked Tim.

‘Answering your question,’ I said with a big grin. ‘You want to find the chicks, then follow that bird.’

What a procession we made. Four humans and one ancient dog following a crazy bird that kept twittering and dancing from one bush to the next. Me in the front, Peg right behind, followed by Tim and the pilot. The cameraman was prancing around us trying to capture it all on tape.

Near the edge of the scrub, close to the estuary, was a sunny glade surrounded by manuka. Bigmouth flew into the glade,
did a circle, and then perched on a nearby branch. Below her was T-Boy squatting in the grass. Bigmouth gave a
tseeoo, tseeoo
, and out from under T-Boy’s feathers popped four tiny, hairy heads.

I knelt in the grass and watched, scarcely able to control my emotions. Oh, how I had hoped for this moment. I don’t know what the others were experiencing, but to me it was like the start of a new beginning. All the things that had happened over the past few months no longer seemed to matter. This was what it had all been about.

After a while, one of the chicks, braver than the others, came out from the safety of its father’s feathers and moved towards me. It was so tiny that it had trouble pushing through the blades of grass. When it was almost at my knees, it stopped, looked straight up at me and went
peep
.

‘Hello to you, too,’ I whispered. ‘Welcome to Mansfield Bay. I hope your stay here will be a long and happy one.’