For a glorious few seconds the air would clear of dust and we would be able to gulp its freshness.
The first piece of tar seal came at the showgrounds, that privileged place where the Pakeha farmers brought their horses to jump. Our father Joshua would sometimes slow down as we passed to allow my sisters and I to peer at the red and white figures on their prancing horses. We called the Pakeha the silver people because they always had silver knives and forks while we used tin. They paraded shining silver horses too, with names like Queen’s Guardsman or Lady Jane or Vanity Fair, not Pancho Villa, Blacky or Piebald like ours. Their horses had saddles and bridles, and their riders got dressed in hunting coats and cute little caps; everybody clapped when a Pakeha horse jumped a fence. We hoped nobody clapped when we rode ours, otherwise the owners would know we were borrowing again. You wouldn’t see three or four Pakeha jumping on one horse as you would on a Maori horse, either.
The second section of tar seal came at Patutahi where there was the local hotel, the general store selling everything from sweets to saddles, the blacksmith, the petrol station owned by Mr Jenkins and, most hated of all, Patutahi School. There was also a movie theatre which was bigger than the one at Hukareka by a mile, and sportsgrounds for rugby and hockey. Once part of Maori country, Patutahi was owned by the descendants of those soldiers who had fought against Te Kooti Arikirangi in the 1880s. Pakeha were in power here. The publican, Mr Walker, was a Pakeha and so were the skinny spinsters Miss Zelda and Miss Daisy who owned the general store with their brother, Scott, but that was the preordained order of things. The whole township of Patutahi proclaimed Pakeha status in that no-dust zone. Pakeha were served first at the hotel. Pakeha imposed their language on all the signs. Pakeha were always boss.
We were taught by Pakeha. Mr Johnston — we called him Three Legs on account of his randiness — was our headmaster and Miss Dalrymple taught us English, history and something called music appreciation. Miss Dalrymple also caned us out of our culture and gave us lines if we spoke in Maori. She was not unkind; some belief in Christianity and British Empire made her assume she knew what we wanted. The irony was that although our teachers were our superiors, they were in a minority among us. Perhaps this explains the zeal with which they imposed their beliefs. Convert the Maori before they rebel.
The Pakeha also happened to be our creditors, giving us our groceries and petrol and beer on the tick in those long lean winter months when there was no work. I doubt if any of us managed to get out of debt during the summer. There always seemed to be money owing on the tally which Miss Zelda had displayed above the counter at the general store.
Once past Patutahi there was no more seal. From here to Waituhi was dust and more dust, the constant characteristic of Maori country. As a consequence everybody, including our father, drove in the middle of the road, kept in front of other cars and wouldn’t let anybody pass. Better to be in front where the sweet air was than behind in a dust cloud kicked up by another car.
Some sense of spitefulness used to overcome my sisters and I whenever we were on the road in our Pontiac and a car came up from behind. Immune to the honking and the swearing — ‘Get over, you bastard! Let us pass!’ — we fluttered our eyelashes, shocked at the swearing, as if we were the Royalty of the Road. Oh how we hated it if a car managed to squeeze past. We would wind down our windows and pelt the back with stones we carried specifically for that purpose. As for our father, he would drive on oblivious to all until we had arrived at Waituhi. Then, if the cars behind happened to belong to some of our relations, he would wind down his window and feign surprise –
‘Aue, kia ora, cuz. I didn’t know it was you behind me.’
Sometimes there’d be reckless races along those roads by young men like my handsome cousin Mohi. ‘Yahooo!’ The boys would hang out of the cars or ride astride the mudguards, eyebrows and hair caked in dust, their arms slapping at the doors as if riding wild mustangs.
You could always tell when you had reached Waituhi. On the left of the road was the terraced hillside where the Dodds’ house stood, a two-storeyed white colonial house which thought it owned the hill. On the right were the tall maize cribs like a wall curving around the road. Then, there it was, the village of Waituhi — a road with houses on either side and, in their back yards, the best maize, kumara, pumpkin and watermelon crops this side of Heaven. And, to one side was the Waipaoa River, ruling all our lives. It had the sweetest-tasting water in the world.
First came the Pakowhai part of Waituhi, with the small church and muddy road along which were grouped the houses of Pakowhai marae. The houses here were four-walled boxes painted red or green or, on a bad day, both red and green with some yellow and purple added in just for fun. Sometimes you’d see an old kuia smoking in the sun.
Along the straight was the Rongopai part of Waituhi. Here the houses were strung amid flax and huge Scotch thistles, the symbol of our warrior prophet Te Kooti Arikirangi for whom Rongopai marae was built. That was in the 1880s, after the government pardoned him and we expected him to be allowed to return to us. Although he was stopped by police, his presence still lived among us — as did that of the artists who created Rongopai. The houses here were more brightly coloured than at Pakowhai, as if the owners wanted you to know that they were the ancestors of the people who had painted the interior of the meeting house. A riot of red, green, yellow, purple and blue, the houses proved that artistry isn’t always inherited from generation to generation. You might see a farmer urging his horse to pull a flat dray from one field to the next.
Around the corner from Rongopai was the Takitimu part, with Takitimu marae just beneath the village graveyard. Here the houses were built away from the road, appearing like solitary ships on a heaving sea of yellow grain. Except for the indomitable Nani Mini Tupara, who looked like an old Incan princess, Takitimu people were more constrained than the rest of Waituhi, and that showed in their colour schemes — they left all other colours out except purple and green.
Further along was the Wi Pere part of Waituhi. Here my granduncle Ihaka lived in the old Pere homestead with my grandaunt Riripeti, whom some called Artemis. It was Riripeti who took on Te Kooti’s mantle after he died, and who held Waituhi together through the First World War, the great flu epidemic, the Depression, the Second World War and the post-war era. That was why Granduncle Ihaka lived with her rather than she with him. She headed the Ringatu part of Waituhi, and when she said jump we all jumped — including Grandfather Tamihana. Although a woman, Riripeti was the only one Grandfather acknowledged to be above him. Her line of ancestry was higher.
Our home, where my sisters and I lived with our father Joshua and our mother Huria, was in the Rongopai part of Waituhi. There we lived with Grandmother Ramona and Grandfather Tamihana.
Chapter 2
There was surely no better place to live in the whole world than Waituhi. That is, unless it was Sunday. On that day the roosters worried about crying ‘Cock a doodle doo!’, fearing that too loud an utterance might bring down the wrath of God and get them thrown prematurely into the cooking pot. The dogs, too, were silent. Sometimes I would look out the window and even see people pushing their cars past the homestead to start them up further down the road.
As if He lived here.
What made Sundays even worse was that Glory and I had to get up earlier than usual to milk the cows because church meetings started at eight. I wished I was Maui the demigod who tamed the sun, and that I could either stop Sunday from coming or else hurry us all to Monday. No such luck.