‘If you give me the money, I will build up a shearing gang. Let the Pakeha be the farmer and let me shear his sheep.’
‘So that you can fleece him?’ Apirana Ngata asked, his eyes twinkling.
‘Ae, Ta Api.’
So it was agreed. The story of the Mahana shearing saga began.
‘So you see,’ Aunt Ruth said, finally, ‘our family shearing business has been blessed by God from the very beginning.’
Glory clapped her hands. ‘And we’ve lived happily ever after!’ She was always a sucker for happy endings.
‘Well —’ Aunt Ruth looked doubtful.
Glory’s eyebrows furrowed.
‘Yes,’ Aunt Ruth said hastily.
Chapter 10
Andrew and Haromi were waiting at the corner for the school bus, standing as far away from the small kids as possible. Andrew saw me and waved. ‘Did you bring any matches?’ he asked.
I nodded. We had about five minutes before the bus arrived. Quickly we went into the flax where Andrew pulled out some tobacco and Haromi some De Reszke cigarette paper. Haromi was the expert in making roll-your-owns and, in a trice, one cigarette was lit and being passed around for a puff.
‘The place is fucking deserted,’ Haromi said.
Haromi always looked so angry at the world, so angry at being stuck with awful parents and being a goddam Mahana. When she was younger she actually went through a phase when she would whisper darkly, ‘I’m not really a Mahana, you know. Somebody made a mistake up in Heaven and mixed me up with the babies destined for Los Angeles.’ Today she looked even angrier. She had eyeliner around her eyes and had hitched her skirt up around her knees. Rebellion, rebellion.
She stood up and yelled, ‘I wish I could tell you all to go to Hell but we’re already here!’
The kids further up the road stopped, bewildered. Then, Oh it’s just Haromi again.
‘Guess who’s in charge of the women?’ I asked, puffing coolly on the cigarette she handed me.
‘Not you too?’ Andrew answered in mock surprise. ‘Pity they’re either older or our sisters. But there’s always —’ He winked at Haromi and she punched him.
‘I’m grounded as well,’ Haromi said, ‘though for different reasons, obviously. Mum thinks I’m too dangerous to be around the shearers. As if I’m interested in them. The only boy I want,’ she sighed, ‘is James.’ She had seen Rebel Without a Cause four times and knew some of the lines off by heart.
‘I could have done with the pocket money,’ I said.
‘It’s all a plot,’ Andrew said. ‘They think that if we don’t get any pocket money we can’t get up to any mischief. So they make us milk cows instead.’
Haromi tossed her hair, working herself up into a dramatic storm. When her voice came out it could have been Natalie Wood’s. ‘Oh I despise everything about being a Mahana and what they’re doing to me,’ she emoted, batting her eyelids furiously. ‘I’m just too good for this family. One of these days I’m getting on the first bus out of here. I’m going to all those places where my kind of people are. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, anywhere except here. And you know why? Because I’m worth it. I’ve got talent. And I’ll just die here, I know I will, I’ll really die —’ She subsided into cinematic sobs.
Yeah yeah, Haromi, yeah yeah.
‘At least we have each other,’ Andrew said.
Haromi stared at him as if he hadn’t understood one thing she had said. Finally she nodded, ‘Yes, and we’ll show them.’
‘Oh shit, there’s the bus,’ Andrew said. He stood up and stamped the cigarette out. There was just enough time for me to start our secret catechism, the words that bonded us together as the Three Musketeers of Waituhi.
‘In the beginning was our patriarch Tamihana Mahana!’ I yelled. Andrew grinned and Haromi took my arm. ‘He was like unto Samson and known far and wide for his strength and as a man among men. All the people clamoured for him, pleading that he be their champion in rugby, hockey, boxing, wrestling and other sports. Yea, and because he was handsome to look upon, even the concubines and harlots of the city of the plains desired him. But in the land of Nod he took to wife Ramona, who was a virtuous daughter of that land.’
Andrew took over. ‘Then an angel came unto Tamihana and said unto him, “Alas, Tamihana, you have strayed onto the path of the ungodly. The Lord thy God has therefore sent me to save you.”’
Haromi gave a giggle. ‘But Tamihana closed his heart to the angel and it was only until they had bargained and had wrestled that Tamihana verily realised that the angel was indeed a messenger of God. Yeah, he got trounced.’
By this time we were laughing out loud.
‘Then Tamihana said unto the angel, “What is the Lord my God’s will?” And the angel said unto him, “You and your wife Ramona will be blessed with many children. Raise them and all that are yours so that they may be counted among the faithful. Let others see your works so that they come to God and inherit the sweet Beulah land.” ’
We completed the catechism in unison. ‘Thus did Tamihana know that his mission was to be the father of many children, yea, as Abraham was. His loins poured out seed and he was blessed with sixteen children, alas, four dying at childbirth. Nevertheless, Tamihana was content, saying, “Although my children number only twelve they will be as the twelve thousand. Verily I shall raise them as a family in God, for that is how He has willed it and thus it will be done.” And Tamihana’s children had children including —’
‘Simeon Mahana!’ I shouted.
‘Andrew Whatu!’ Andrew shouted.
‘And Haromi Whatu!’ Haromi shouted.
‘And because we were different,’ we said together, ‘we were treated like shit.’
‘Me,’ I said.
‘And me,’ Andrew said.
‘And most definitely me,’ Haromi said.
We had reached the bus. We shared a secret glance at each other before we hopped on. ‘All for one and one for all!’ we cried. Then –
‘Grandfather sucks!’ we shouted.
We didn’t give a damn who heard — not even the Poatas.
Chapter 11
Ever since I was an infant and began to understand what people were saying the first tenet of my life had been ‘The family always comes first’; the second was ‘Never trust a Poata’. Had I not assumed — wrongly as it turned out — that this enmity was based on religious differences, I would have thought it the product of some ancient quarrel of biblical or Sicilian proportions.
The adult members of the two families treated the relationship with magnificent disdain. If Uncle Hone met Caesar Poata in the street he would cross over to walk on the other side; if Aunt Sarah saw Poppaea Poata in a shop she would pretend there was a strange odour in the place and walk right out. The younger members, however, were more reckless. My cousin Mohi, for instance, once goaded Fraser Poata into a drag-strip race along the sandy stretch of Wainui Beach. Late one night, with the Poata youths at one end and the Mahanas at the other, they drove headlong at one another. It was Fraser Poata who quailed and pulled over, allowing Mohi to win. He just didn’t have the killer instinct. Just as well, as Mohi was driving Grandfather’s De Soto.
In our younger generation, the Poata counterparts for Haromi, Andrew and I were Poppy, Titus Junior — we called him Tight Arse — and Saul. We went in for eyeballing and swaggering — you know the sort of thing:
‘You’re a black bastard,’ we might say to our duelling threesome at high noon just before a movie matinee.
‘Not as black as you,’ they might reply.