Finding, p.7
Finding, page 7
Over 150 people died, and my uncle was one of them. Some survivors saw him dragging people through the carriages’ broken windows, pushing them towards the bank. Then one carriage flipped over, and a wall of water swept him away. They found his body the next day, half a mile downstream. He’s buried in our cemetery, too.
I was only nine, but I remember my mother and Nana Lily crying and crying. Grandad Duncan went out, carrying the axe that he’d hurt himself with that time, and began chopping at an old macrocarpa tree that he’d been trimming for firewood. He chopped so hard that the axe broke. He came back to the farmhouse holding the handle.
Uncle Angus was buried a week later. Auntie Whina laid her greenstone bat on the grave, and left it there for a week. Nana Lily did the same with her silver bracelet; then afterwards she gave it to Mum. Some people were afraid that the magpies would steal them, but they lay there untouched.
Tipene and I sloshed along the shingle road towards the stile leading into our home paddock. I was thinking about the milk bar he’d mentioned: I’ll never forget that.
We were in town one day last year. Auntie Whina and Mum wanted new shoes, even though Uncle Robert and Dad said there were plenty of decent gumboots around. They gave me and Tipene and Finola money to buy a milkshake each while they were in the shop — ‘and to stop you boys being silly while we choose’.
The guy serving in the milk bar watched us come in. Finola asked, ‘Could I have a vanilla milkshake, please?’ Tipene went ‘I’ll have a chocolate one, thanks’, and I said ‘Me, too.’
The guy behind the counter didn’t answer for a couple of seconds, then he muttered ‘Not serving just now’.
We boys stared at him. When Finola spoke again, her voice sounded tight. ‘We’d like to buy our milkshakes, please.’
The man shook his head, went ‘Not serving’ again. ‘Try Wilson’s.’
Wilson’s Milk Bar is right down the far end of town. I couldn’t work out what he was on about. But Finola and Tipene had realised something. My friend’s hands were clenched into fists. Finola’s face had gone hot and angry. She’s three years older than him, almost sixteen then, and she stood there like a grown-up. Her eyes stayed on the guy serving — not serving. He wouldn’t look at her; started wiping the counter.
After another few seconds, Finola went ‘You’re pathetic. You know that?’ She turned and strode out. Tipene glared at the guy, then followed. I went after them, trying to understand what was going on.
‘What—’ I began when we were out on the footpath. But right then, Finola put her hands to her face and burst into tears. Tipene looked wilder than I’d ever seen him.
‘What—’ I began again, like a cuckoo clock or something.
My friend glared at me. ‘He wouldn’t serve any of us because we’re Maori. Couldn’t you tell? The bloody pig!’
My mouth dropped open. I felt my own face start to heat up.
Finola pulled out her handkerchief (how come girls always have a clean handkerchief?), and swiped it across her eyes. ‘He— He—’
Right then, Mum and Auntie Whina came out of the shoe shop across the road. They weren’t carrying any shopping bags, so maybe they’d decided on the gumboots after all. Auntie Whina saw her daughter crying on the opposite footpath and charged over to her, while cars slammed their brakes on.
Finola dragged in deep breaths and told her mother what had happened. ‘He told us to go to Wilson’s instead,’ Tipene said. My friend’s fists were still clenched. I heard Mum make a hissing sound through her teeth.
Auntie Whina held Finola’s hand. She’s shorter than Mum, but she seemed to have grown six inches taller. ‘We’re going to be very polite, darling.’ Then mother and daughter stalked into the milk bar, with the rest of us trailing behind.
The guy behind the counter glanced up, and his mouth opened. Auntie Whina strode to the counter and gazed at him for a second. She spoke in a voice so sweet, I hardly recognised it.
‘Good morning. I believe my daughter and son and their friend wanted a milkshake a few minutes ago, and you wouldn’t serve them. Is that right?’
The man’s head was down. He kept wiping the counter, which didn’t need wiping.
Auntie Whina waited a moment, then: ‘I think you owe them an apology. I’d like to hear it — now.’
The guy’s face twisted. He opened his mouth. Right then, my mother stepped forward so she stood beside Auntie Whina. ‘If you don’t apologise, I’ll write to the paper and ring the radio station. I’m sure they’ll be interested to hear what you did.’
The man’s cheeks were blotched with red. He muttered something. I think I heard the word ‘sorry’.
Auntie Whina’s eyes stayed fixed on him. ‘I suppose that feeble effort is all we’ll get from someone like you. Well, you’ll be sorrier still. None of my friends or my whanau — you’re probably too ignorant to know that word — will ever buy anything from here again.’
‘That goes for my friends and family, too,’ went Mum. The two women stood side by side; the guy scowled at the floor. ‘You’re going to lose dozens of customers,’ my mother went on. ‘You deserve it for being such a bigot. Wilson’s will make a fortune.’
She put an arm around Auntie Whina, who was still holding Finola’s hand. The three of them turned and strode from the milk bar. Tipene and I straggled after them. ‘Wow!’ my friend breathed to me. His eyes gleamed.
Yeah, I thought, really intelligently. Wow!
That slightly lighter stretch of grey cloud to one side had grown a bit by the time Tipene and I reached our farmhouse and started taking off our oilskins on the back porch. But the rain still fell. Our cows stood in the shelter of the remaining macrocarpas, slowly chewing their cud and looking thoughtful, like cows do.
We went down the hall to my room, past the photo of Great-aunt Jess wearing her MBE. It stands for Member of the British Empire, and it’s a flash medal on a flash ribbon that she got for helping poor people, ages and ages ago. She’d have been proud of what Mum and Auntie Whina did in the milk bar.
‘That you, boys?’ Mum called from the kitchen. ‘Come say hello to Nana and Grandad.’
She and my grandparents sat around the big table. Grandad Duncan’s axe handle leaned against his chair. He uses it as a walking stick when his leg hurts him. He reckons he’s got plans for the handle, whatever that means.
We talked while Tipene and I scoffed scones. ‘How’s the orchard looking?’ Grandad wanted to know. ‘Flood isn’t up that far, is it?’
We told him it wasn’t. Our family still picks fruit from his orchard, even though it’s easy to drive into town and get things now — especially since we’ve got one of those flash new grocery shops where you serve yourself. ‘I’m not leaving it all to those cheeky magpies,’ Grandad says.
Just to show it wasn’t finished, the rain crashed down again as we ate the last scones and headed to my room. We gave Great-aunt Jess (MBE)’s photo a pretend salute as we went past. When she visited us about four years ago, she and Nana Ahorangi went shopping in town for a posh dress. The shop had a snooty saleswoman who looked Tipene’s nana up and down, and asked ‘Is it for anything special?’
‘Yes,’ went Great-aunt Jess with a sweet smile. ‘My friend and I are meeting the Governor-General.’ The saleswoman’s mouth dropped open like a fish.
It was true. After World War Two, people in our valley got together and raised money to build a Memorial Hall to the men and women from around here who fought in the two world wars. Great-aunt Jess wrote to Government House in Wellington, saying it would be good if the Governor-General could come and open it. He did!
He was a tall bloke with a Pommy accent and a suit. Tipene and I felt a bit disappointed. We thought he might wear a robe and carry a sword or something. Our school did a special welcome and haka that Auntie Whina and Uncle Robert (should I call him that?) had taught us. And Nana Ahorangi wore her posh dress.
In my room, Tipene and I played Snap a few more times. The sky outside was getting lighter; there’d only been a couple of showers after that last heavy fall. Maybe we could go and have a really good look at the river. Nearly a week stuck inside, and, like I said, it was the holidays.
Just after lunch, Mum called out: ‘I’m off to see old Mrs Ross. You boys OK?’
It was Tipene who replied. ‘I’d better be getting home, Auntie Florence. Thanks for letting me stay.’ Straightaway I went: ‘Can I go with Tipene?’
‘All right,’ Mum replied. ‘But stay away from the river. It’ll be really dangerous for a few days.’ When we said nothing, she called ‘You hear me?’
‘Uh-huh,’ we both went. We didn’t look at each other.
Mum left a few minutes later. Our truck bounced off down the drive, a couple of haybales still in its tray. Tipene and I put on our gumboots and oilskins once more, and headed off towards the bridge. We didn’t lock the door; nobody in our valley worries about stuff like that.
Drizzle still drifted down, but a lot of the sky was just light grey now. We reached the bridge, and stood looking at the Waimoana bulldozing along, filling its whole bed, more branches spinning in the water as it tore by. A thin sunlight touched the swamp upstream. Reeds, flax, the water among them gleamed silver. A hawk hung above, the way it always does, like a sentry guarding something.
‘Great, eh?’ Tipene murmured.
It was. The swamp always looks magic. Dad reckons the hair on his neck stood on end the first time he went there, and he soon gave up any idea of digging for anything. It just didn’t feel right, he said.
We gazed up and down the valley. The orchard trees glittered with raindrops. The paddocks lay silent, pools of water dotted across them. The hawk wheeled. I’m going to stay here forever, I decided. I’m going to be a farmer and live here, and keep all my Pakeha and Maori friends, and it’ll be absolutely amazing. I blinked. Where did all that come from so suddenly?
Like I said before, I hadn’t really thought about what I was going to be. I knew we’d learn about jobs when we started high school — just a few weeks away! But the main thing Tipene and I were interested in was the high-school army cadets. You get a proper army uniform, and do marching and training for a week. You even get to shoot (only at targets) with proper .303 rifles.
But now this thought had hit me. I blinked again, then followed Tipene along the wooden deck. The river boomed past, forty feet below; the bridge trembled. I thought of that dead cow; anything falling in there wouldn’t have a hope. I wondered if there’d been any more slips on the streams further up the valley.
Finola already knows what she’s going to do when she leaves high school. She sat her School Certificate exams at the end of last year. You have to get 200 marks before they’ll let you into the Sixth Form, and she swotted really hard. Typical girl. She’s got a holiday job three days a week at the district council office in town, and she wants to be a teacher. Fancy wanting that!
She said she felt nervous before her job interview. Ever since that milk-bar business, she’s ready for people to snub her because she’s part-Maori. But the council offered her the holiday job straightaway.
Nobody’s ever picked on me for my race, except for a couple of guys at school after Tipene and I told them to stop taking the cricket gear that Standard Three and Four used at lunchtime. One of them went ‘Aw yeah, you Horis always stick together, eh?’ I didn’t take much notice, but Tipene was pretty wild.
Beneath the deck, the Waimoana roared past so loudly we had to raise our voices to hear each other. Just upstream, the big shelves of rock where we like to swim were half underwater. You could see water foaming beneath the ledge that was our secret hiding place when we were little.
‘Let’s have a look, eh?’ Tipene pointed at the rocks.
‘Yeah, good idea.’ I remembered Mum telling us to stay away from the river. But, well, we wouldn’t be in the river — we’d be on the bank above it. So we climbed over the fence, and headed towards the rocks. A gigantic willow branch came hurtling down on the frothing water. It rammed into the bank, and lifted straight up in the air. Then it thwacked back down into the current, and went spinning on.
‘Hey!’ Tipene yelled.
‘Hey!’ I yelled, too; original as always.
We grinned at each other. It’s hard to believe anyone could look down on Tipene and Finola and their family, or any of us, for being Maori. But I’d woken up a bit to some things, especially when we talked at school about the rugby tour.
Last year — 1956 — the Springboks toured New Zealand, and the All Blacks beat them, three test matches to one! It was the first time we’d ever won a series against South Africa. We all listened to the games on the wireless, and when New Zealand won the final test, Mum and Dad and I cheered and yelled.
Since South Africa keeps its black and white people apart, there were no black players in the Springbok team. And if the All Blacks tour there, they can’t take any Maori players.
We couldn’t believe it when Mr McDougall told us. Kids started going ‘That’s rotten!’ ‘I hate that.’ ‘We should take our Maori blokes anyway!’ ‘Yeah, we play better than you Pakeha jokers, too!’ (That last one was Tipene, of course.) The class got quite noisy, until Mr McDougall held up a hand, and we all went quiet again.
‘It’s something you might like to talk about with your parents,’ our teacher said. ‘How do they feel about it?’ Actually, some people in the valley reckon we shouldn’t let political things interfere with rugby, and the All Blacks should go without Maori players. My dad — my Maori dad! — says if we tour there, then South African teams will keep touring here, and they can learn how different races get along. I don’t agree … I think.
We squelched along the path towards the rocks, past where a road-mender used to live years ago. His hut fell down in the big earthquake when Mum was just a few years older than I am now. She must have been pretty brave, getting across the bridge to reach home. They had to build a whole new deck later.
Funny thing is, the earthquake made some good things happen. Before then, my Great-great-aunt Janet had sort of cut herself off from the family. There’d been an argument, and she moved away. But after the quake, she got back in touch to see if everyone was all right, even came to visit. Strange how things change, eh? See, I’m a poet as well as an original thinker.
We can see our farmhouse from the rocks. When we’re swimming there, we sometimes wave and call out to Dad or Grandad Duncan if they’re in the paddocks.
We reached the edge of the bank and stopped. The water stampeded past, ten feet below. It crashed against the bank, sprayed up onto the ledge, and swept across the rocks. A square piece of wood lay there, where the flood must have landed it. Another branch, a small one, flashed past on a whirling eddy. It sped on downstream, faster than a person could run.
‘Look at that!’ Tipene said — shouted, actually. I was looking. This was amazing. I’d never known water could have so much power in it.
Above us, a couple of patches of blue gleamed for a second, then disappeared. The rain had almost stopped. Maybe the farms upriver wouldn’t have suffered too badly after all. I wondered how many streams had been blocked by slips.
Tipene was saying something, but I couldn’t hear him over the roar of the river. A grinding sound swelled, then faded. More boulders being dragged along in the current. ‘What?’ I asked.
‘Let’s go down. Be great to see it up close.’
I stared around. The sky was clearing over the swamp. The Waimoana seemed to have reached right into the flax and reeds. The door of our hayshed stood open, but nobody was in sight.
Yeah, we could climb down and stand on the rocks that the water was sweeping across. It was fast, but only ankle-deep. If we held onto the sides of the bank, we’d be fine. OK, Mum had told us not to, but we wouldn’t be in the dangerous part.
My friend was already out of his oilskin and kicking off his gumboots. I took another look around, then started taking off my boots and coat as well. We piled them on top of the bank.
Tipene began clambering down. There were handholds — a stone, a hollow in the bank, a tree root — that we used when we went there to swim. I followed. The clay was muddy; I’d have to be careful not to get too much on my clothes, or Mum would want to know where we’d been.
My feet touched something. ‘Don’t tread on my head!’ Tipene yelled. He was a poet, too? He stared at the water sweeping across the stony surface below him, looking for a place to put his own feet.
‘Why not?’ I called back. ‘Your head’s harder than a rock!’ We both started sniggering.
Tipene reached a leg down. Then he was standing, the muddy water sluicing around his shins. He staggered for a moment, grabbed at the bank, and said, ‘It’s OK. Come down.’
I let go of the root I was holding, reached down for a hollow in the bank, and followed. The clay was so sodden, it came away in my hand. I half-lurched, half-dropped onto the rock beside my friend, clutching at him as I did so. We both reeled sideways, then stood with the water skimming past.
‘You’ve ruined that handhold.’ Tipene stared at the gouge in the bank where clay had slumped away. ‘We’ll have to get back up a different way.’
I took no notice. I pointed at the small ledge, our hiding place. ‘What’s that?’
Tipene turned to look. I heard his breath stop.
The square piece of wood was just a few feet away. We were close enough to see the shapes on its side. Whorls, curves, a face with a tongue pushed out. Silver and blue glowed. A pair of paua-shell eyes, set into the wood.
Tipene’s voice was hushed, but I could hear him above the rush of water. ‘The river left it there. It’s — it must have come from the swamp.’
