As he flicks away the last waterlogged midge, the sun shines more brightly, and his heart lightens with the morning.
The kaumatua:
plaited a kete.
He put in it: cold potatoes; fresh cress; old corn; and the last piece of fried bread. He filled the battered thermos with strong sugared milkless tea.
"That is all there is, for now."
There was half an ounce of tobacco left in his tin. He put it, and a dozen wax matches and a strip of coarse sandpaper, into the kete too.
"This person, they may smoke."
There is a person, digger or stranger or broken man.
Last night, a huhu beetle tapped on the window.
He sat wrapped in the blanket from his bed, candle glimmering on the floor beside him, and watched it knock and walk over the pane for an hour.
He did not let it in.
Then he dreamed, although he did not think he fell asleep. And his grandmother, whom he had last seen as oiled ochred bones, spoke to him.
"I wasn't feebleminded, I did not speak of illusions before I died," she said acidly. "It was the way things had to be done. The waiting was as much for your good as for that which you watch over. It is finished now."
The candle had sunk and died. The huhu had gone. He had sat, shivering, waiting for the dawn.
Even though I have had a long life; even though I have been taught and prepared for this time, I am not ready for it.
Are all people so wary of their death?
He took off his pack, lay down, and looked over the face of the
bluff. A grey blue clay-like material, slippery-looking; no handhold visible,
no purchase for feet.
"Ah, screw it." He sat up, leaning against the pack.
It had begun to drizzle again an hour ago. He had tramped two miles looking for the river, and hadn't found it. Wet branches smacked into him viciously, his shoulders still ached from the packstraps, and he was beginning to feel sick and faint.
He had last eaten yesterday afternoon, when the bus had stopped at a tearooms. Cardboardy sandwiches with limp tomato insides. This morning's tea had used all his water, and the freeze-dried food he carried needed water for cooking it.
He had turned for the beach, and the bluff still confronted him.
On the beach I'd have water. And there might be some decent food, there will be… pipi, karengo, kina, something… but I'm not a bloody bird.
He gestured over the bluff with his thumb, and then snarled at himself… you're going round the twist, Ngakau-
There was a quart flask of rum in the pack, and three of Kerewin's cigars left in their case. Might stimulate some useful thinking. Some thinking, eh. And dear Lord, it'd make me feel warmer.
Despite his parka, he was cold, even while he had been walking. Now the cold had pierced bone deep
He pours the cap full of rum and swallows. Fills it again, and tosses that down too. The stinging warmth sweeps down his gullet, and his skin contracts and tingles; his stomach opens wide. He fills the cap again, and balances it carefully: it holds three nips, and it is a long time since he had a drink.
"That is better," and his voice sounds cheerful and confident.
Days in pubs… long long days and nights, days soaking, and blind nights… and those three mixed-up sweet times of song and talk and happy heavy drinking… though Kerewin pake could never forget herself and come home, it was so good.
He can feel his face flushing, beginning to sweat. He throws back the hood of his parka and lets the drizzle fall on his hair. Clipped hair, prison cut.
He drinks the capful slowly.
The kaumatua:
"Now," he says, sitting down beside the little mound of earth, "where do I go?"
The top of the mound is smoothed flat, and he has traced where the river flows, where the inland track is, where the five beaches are, and their headlands.
So many years-
He shuts his eyes, and drops the twig of karamu he holds in his left hand. In the dark at the back of his mind, he hears his grandmother whisper. He lifts his right hand and lets the other twig fall. It leaves his hand slowly, not like a stick dropping at all.
It falls without a sound.
Then, his eyes tightly closed, he says haltingly, fearfully under his breath, the old words.
He sighs when they are finished. I must do this, for my strength is waning, but the cold, aiee, the cold is almost too much.
He opens his eyes.
The dart he had first dropped lies on the third beach. It is twisted as though something had snapped at it in midair.
The other, the seeker from his right hand, has inched its way to meet it, and now lies quiescent, touching the first.
He can see its thin trail quite clearly on the smoothed earth.
But it is as the first time: the twigs have moved and he never saw what moved them.
And as before, he feels the dry harsh laughter of his grandmother rustle through his mind.
"It's a bloody long way to jump."
The smoke from his cigar curls back and stings his eyes.
Those legs, thin-calved, weak-thewed, with brittle ankles. So painstakingly, painfully massaged back into usefulness. The old cold hands pressed back and forth; the rank smell of acetic acid and oil; the pinching and kneading of wasted muscles, "E boy, move your foot," pummelled to walking again.
So, I'm a shattered heap down there. The tide will roll in and sweep me away. Stronger logs are disposed beneath the sea.
He got up unsteadily, and began to shuffle back and forth, a foot from the edge.
The space was small. No more than two yards free of scrub, but the shuffling became a dance, a dance of abandon, of pain, of illusion. Stagger of despairing hope forward; a step of beaten-by-circumstance back. It's become the sin dance of forlornness, the one dance of death.
But this lone dance is wrong, he thinks hazily. Even in hell, there be lines, ranks of sinewed legs beating down beside mine. Ka mate, ka mate…. He fell down against the pack.
Why am I sitting down? When all I need to do to get to the bottom is jump?
A three-note saw, a whining vicious singing: Jump Nga Kau.
He pounded on his head. His fist made a dull sound but didn't hurt. Beat your brains out, Ngakau, beat your sense back in. Because you do know what you're doing… o yes. All those nights in the dark alone, and his face came before you as you split his lips, and bruised and cut and broke his face. Cracked his skull, and that was just the beginning. Now they're gone, gone, gone beyond,
"O I need you!" he screams, "I need you both!"
Fists clenched against the sides of his head as though he would press more sound free, as though to make his screams lightning edged to split this coming dark.
If I make it, it will be a sign.
Rocks await.
He tosses the pack to them.
It falls, tumbling briefly, thwacking against the bank below.
Thud. Imagine that's you. And the snap is your barrelchest giving way at the stays, the heart cask battered and broke.
He throws down the empty flask, and a spin of last drops zags out golden.
A measure as an offering. Lucky gods. You get five full drops as a libation.
"The last measure is me," saying it loudly, but not in a scream, "I have rum for blood, and blood in plenty. Measure me!"