Once Were Warriors Read online

  Drowning herself in the sweet release of beer, colder and colder beer.

  What time is it? Must be getting on, it’s dark outside. Dark? So what’s new? It’s dark outside this house even when it’s daylight. Beth close to the stumbling stage. Yet her mind lucid. Or feeling it was. Certainly something of clarity’d been released or triggered by the intake of beer. Yeah, even when the sun’s shining it’s still dark in Pine Block. Oh, have another beer, Beth Heke who used to be a Ransfield! shouting to the ceiling, which she was seeing in her mind as the sky and then it wasn’t the sky, it was really a theatre, a huge theatre of people who were watching and listening to her. They’re my audience. I tellem what’s wrong with this world, with my world, with the MAORI world — Yep, the MAORI world, in big capital letters like that. I tellem like that because it’s a big problem being a Maori in this world. We used to be a race of warriors, O audience out there. You know that? And our men used to have full tattoos all over their ferocious faces, and it was chiselled in and they were not to utter a sound. Not one sound. The women, too, they had tats on their chins and their lips were black with tattooing. But I think they let us cry out when it was being done; I spose they thought us women are weak anyway, though we aren’t.

  Now where was I and what was I saying? Oh who cares? Who gives a fuck?

  And we used to war all the time, us Maoris. Against each other. True. It’s true, honest to God, audience. Hated each other. Tribe against tribe. Savages. We were savages. But warriors, eh. It’s very important to remember that. Warriors. Because, you see, it was what we lost when you, the white audience out there, defeated us. Conquered us. Took our land, our mana, left us with nothing. But the warriors thing got handed down, see. Well, sort of handed down; in a mixed-up sense it did. It was more toughness that got handed down from generation to generation. Toughness, eh. Us Maoris might be every bad thing in this world but you can’t take away from us our toughness. But this toughness, Pakeha audience of mine, it started to mean less and less as the world got older, learned more, and new technology all this fandangled computer stuff, oh, but even before computers, it all made toughness redundant. Now thassa good word for a Maori, eh, redundant?

  But we — or our men, anyway — are clinging onto this toughness thing, like it’s all we got, while the rest of the world’s leaving us behind. It’s not toughness we need anymore, it’s — it’s — Shaking her head. So what is it we need, O solver of the world’s problems? Beer! hahaha! laughing. Rocking back and forth with it. And downing another glass in one long, sweet and increasingly mindless pull.

  Aee, Beth, nemine the crying for your own race. I were you I’d be crying for you, girl. Just you.

  All these message-like wordings appearing in Beth’s brain, her half-enlightened, half-befuddled mind. And the comings and noisy goings of her children — what remained of them, with Boogie gone (and no official notification a mother her child, not yet anyway), and Nig, he was mostly not at home, spent all his time hanging out with other Brown Fist prospects, fighting, building up his reputation, his credentials for entry to that terrible gang. Hearing the street coming to life: cars revving, or gunning past, exhausts backfiring, exhausts roaring, exhausts rumbling; and she’d imagined the lights blinking on all over Pine Block, so to light up the sordid activities she knew so well. Drinking drinking, but Lord what it did to the people when it was finished withem; she even picked up, between records, the rattling clink of bottles being toted in wooden crates — I know it so well that sound — and laughter, Maori laughter: explosive, spontaneous, it made you want to laugh without having to know the joke, it’s like a mirror, an emotional mirror of yourself.

  Grace feeding the kids in the kitchen, such a good kid, Grace; Grace talking in her quiet way to them; even when she growled at the younger ones it wasn’t like growling, more like mild scolding, but that’s a word you’d never hear in Pine Block: scold. What’s that other tame word you hear the Pakehas use on the TV? Cross. That’s it: cross. Cross. If you do that again I’ll be cross with you, child. Hahaha.

  She saw his — his — HIS — lights flick on across the way there, most of it obscured by trees; tried to imagine what he and they might be doing this Friday autumn evening. Bet it was nice, whatever the Tramberts were doing.

  Drinking. Sending Grace next door (with the secreted ten dollars) to buy the next lot of beer. Heedless then. To near everything but the emotions. And music. Love my music.

  I was dancing — (oh yes) — with my darling — (mmmm) — to the Tennessee Waltz! Beth adding her voice to that of Patti Page, the song echoey in the sparsely furnished room, sliding — sliiiiding her bare feet over the varnished floorboards, I remember the night, arms out holding her imaginary partner, who happened to have a face like Jake’s. Setting her mouth possessively at the part about the woman’s darling being taken from her by another, Beth thinking no bitch’d take her man without a fight. Feeling proud, vain about her possessiveness. And loving the deep rich voice of Patti, because Patti’s distinctive, deeper than normal tone somehow made a woman’s possessiveness stronger, more real. Such a lovely melody too. Not like this modern stuff, it goes bangbangbang, thumpthumpthump all the time. It should float, it should be like the sea, it should make a person feel romantic. Twirling — oops, nearly tripping over herself.

  And outside a pair of eyes staring at the apparitions of her mother going back and forth across the line of sitting-room windows; hurting for her, hating her for succumbing even her terrible miseries to the booze — it’s always the booze in this place — and the strains of a singer with an unusually deep (and sort of hauntingly lovely) voice about losing her darling at a Tennessee Waltz. Oh Mum. Mum, Mum, Mum, at that apparition flitting across the screen of windows lost to herself (yet she’s not bad at dancing if it wasn’t for the tripping). The girl giggling, but that was the only time because Grace Heke she was a more serious girl than most, she couldn’t help it, we’re all born different.

  This grotesque face with its wounds fresh and swollen sliding — sliiiding — across a girl’s vision like out of a dream sequence on that backdrop of yellow/white squares illuminating a woman, a mother, a beaten wife, a member of a troubled race, her condition for this side of the world to see.

  The arms outstretched holding this imaginary partner; it must be Dad because she’s holding him at about his tall level where he’d be. Shit, why does she love him? Yet Grace wondering why she herself felt this aching in her heart whenever she thought about her father, which aching felt like love. And such a lovely night of stars above.

  Love. Tennessee Waltz and love being taken. A girl hurt at that, thinking that love should belong to the first to claim it, assuming it is reciprocal. Oh, I’m just a girl, what would I know?

  And that figure flitting back and forth over another Pine Block sitting-room screen.

  6. Jake and the Broken of Hearts and Spirits

  Jake Heke looked like he was chewing on gum the way his jaw muscles were always twitching. But Jake was no gum chewer, just that his teeth ground. It was worse when Jake was asleep; his wife Beth’d have to tell him, Hey, roll over. Like sleeping beside an all-night rubbish chomper. Though she had to be careful waking him like that, he might be having one of his bad dreams. And she’d cop one then.

  Jake knew he was a grinder, but so what, wasn’t any big deal. Didn’t bother him as, say, a sure giveaway of his inner turmoil. Didn’t give a fuck. He ground his teeth, that’s all. Just as he woke from any length of sleep, head running strong with violent dream. How a man is. So he’d always ask Beth, Whassa big fuckin deal about teeth and dreams?

  Just as he woke, almost invariably, with a desire to punch someone, which grew quickly to vivid imaginings of wrongs done him, slights, looks, and so he feeling hurt and then — naturally enough, as he saw it — wanting to right things by the only way he knew how: with his fists.

  Man, I juss wake up wanting to punch somefuckin one.

  Jake’s world was physical; and he was aware
it was physical. He assumed damn near the whole world was seeing it the same. It was there when he woke each day (or night) in the canvas of his mind as physical. He saw people all over — but mostly men — and they were engaged in physical combat, the subjects of combative consideration, their fighting potential, how fast they’d likely be, how good a hit they carried and was it in both hands or just a normal one, right or left (in that order too) could the dude be from this more modern style of scrapping of using the headbutt, the knee, or just anything that came to hand. His mind covered the field of physical confrontation. He saw others in terms of their fighting potential first, before he saw anything. Even on the TV, when he watched the damn thing, he always looked at some dude and wondered if the dude could fight or not. Specially these smooth ones with fuckin hair that didn’t have one hair out of place; they made his teeth rasp together, he wanted to hop inside the TV and smash the cunt’s pretty-boy face to a pulp. And so strong was this hatred, he assumed — never even gave it a thought — it to be perfectly justified. And equally, the odd times he got to smash some pretty-boy’s face in his real world (for simply having what Jake deemed to be pretty-boy looks) it never occurred to Jake that there might be something wrong with his outlook, perhaps his mind. It couldn’t: damn near every man he mixed (drank) with thought the same. He was sure they did. Besides, wasn’t as if a man was only about fighting — course he weren’t. He thought about other things. You know, sport — he liked sport, especially rugby league. And rugby (except there weren’t as many fights in rugby union and they mostly tackled cleanly, whereas league they tried to put the big hits on the other fulla, they had a whole list of foul methods like stiff-arms, coat-hangers, elbow in the throat, eye-gouge, ball-scrag — man, anyone scragged my balls in a game I’d rip his right out — you name it.) and he just loved the boxing, the bigtime stuff they showed on the TV, Sugar Ray Leonard — oh man! — guys like him and the greatest, Ali, when he was around (man, that cat moved sweeter and quicker than even me); a man’d be inspired for weeks after watching one of them black master boxers fighting: he’d practise in his bedroom (preferably when Beth wasn’t around, because she teased a man, made him feel real stink for his love of scrapping, didn’t understand it was an art), he’d throw shots in front of the mirror, a pane of glass, anywhere he could see himself, the beauty therein. And anyway, he thought about other things too … other sports … ah, even political things — not all this shit about who’s teaming up with who, but the main players, they sort of interested a man, though he couldn’t name specifics. Oh, and life. Sure, why not? Don’t everyone think about life, you know, how it fuckin works, why things happen (specially these unreal things, what they call it? Coincidence. Specially that.) Even love. Why not love? Every man needs love: a woman’s love (her twat, more like it), his mates (very important), his kids (in a man’s own way, mind. Don’t wanna be a fuckin sook about it. Gotta get their respect or they’ll walk all over you.) But it was violence that Jake Heke was most tuned to.

  Jake’d woken late, damn near five o’clock at night. Man must’ve been tired from all them late drinking nights (and giving his wife a hiding, hahaha!) and age catching up onim. Be thirty-six in a few months. Though he didn’t really feel age had affected him adversely in any way.

  Man’d had another funny dream too: dreamt he was on this boat and someone’d thrown this fuckin big octopus at him and the thing’d attached itself to him, spread all over him. Jesus fuckin Chrise, he could still feel its every little sucker sucking onto him, sucking the blood from him. And trying to get it off him: every time he ripped a tentacle from one spot, another’d suck onto a new spot. And the slime, man. Man coulda been having a real experience. He’d finally got rid of the monster and then it was time to get the cunts who’d done this to him: he’d punched and broken and torn limbs from their sockets and pulverised a face till it was flat (and yet talking in this squeaky voice that was sad — I mean sad, brother — and asking why he’d done what he did. So a man having to take this little flat face up in his hands, cradle it like a baby and hear himself singing a sortof, whattheycallit, a lullaby. To a face. It was more like a fuckin pikelet with eyes.) Then he remembered how Beth’d more than deserved her hiding because she’d insulted one of their guests. Though when Jake left and slammed the door after him he hadn’t meant to break the damn glass, it just broke. He was only wanting to let Beth know it wasn’t him in the wrong it was her.

  A bus’d pulled alongside him as he headed up his street and Jake’d waved it to fuck off, he wasn’t no fuckin bus-catcher. A bus? Man, he’d rather crawl to where he was going on his hands and knees than be seen dead on a bus. Buses? Man, they’re for losers and housewives and kids and old people with no bread. Dooly’d give a man a lift to town, the pub. A fuckin bus … Maybe Dooly’ll wanna join a man at McClutchy’s, and if he ain’t home I’ll try Bub. But I ain’t fuckin walkin, no way; not on a Friday night, everyone going to town for late shopping and going past a man saying, Hasn’t he got his own car yet? Fuckem. I had the bread I wouldn’t be buying no fuckin car anyrate; I’d get something else nice. A stereo. Or one a them big colour TVs with the screens like a fuckin pitcha theatre. Magine watching the big fights on one a them. Don’t need no car though. Or maybe a man’d buy her, Beth, a car if he had the bread. Save her catching the bus or getting a fuckin rip-off taxi, having to lug a hundred shopping bags with her and half our tribe. (See, Beth? Man thinks of you when you don’t even know it.) Man didn’t like his missus being seen walking, catching the fuckin bus, running around in cabs: people’d think her husband didn’t, you know, take care of her. Or that he was a broken arse. No job. Not looking for one neither. But why should a man when the guvm’nt was paying him as much to stay at home? Man’d be a fool to himself to go work for the fuckin stuff when all he had to do was walk down the footpath to the letterbox on a Thursday morning and it’d be there. Three hundred and sixty smackaroos. For sittin at home. Fuckem. They stupid enough to pay, a man ain’t so stupid not to collect. And I give her half. Clean down the middle. Even Stevens. I don’t try and cheat her out of her share. She’s got the house to run. Bills to pay. Our kids eat like fuckin horses. And my mates like a feed once they had their fill of piss. Me too. Straight down the middle. Not like some ofem, they hardly give their missus’s anything, then they still expect to come home to a feed. Cunts’re dreaming: ya can’t fill a pot on fresh air. As for a man’s own half, he can get by; long as he stays away from the fuckin geegees, they’re his one big downfall. Can’t pick my nose when it comes to the horses. And not as if a man don’t study em for long enough, that’s all he does half the time is get the racing guides, the papers, and study the geegees, their form, their every little history. Come to think of it, a man ain’t no star when it comes to cards neither. Soon as someone ups the ante a man gets scared — nah, not scared, ain’t scared a nuthin or no one. But nervous. Spoils his game, even when he’s got a good hand. Nah, rumbling’s my game; man shoulda been one of them olden-day prizefighters, he woulda made a fortune. A fortune. Hell, but who cares if a man can’t gamble, he c’n still walk into McClutchy’s at opening with not a brass razoo and come out at closing pissed out of his brain and maybe even a few bucks to go buy him some ribs from the Chinese. That’s cos people they respect a man in McClutchy’s where he always drinks. What happens when a man can really handle himself: people wanna buy a man a beer. Damn near line up to buy him one sometimes. Shit, been times when a man had his whole table covered in jugs from the people. Covered. And a man knows, they’re buying his favours, his promise that he’ll leave em alone, or look after em if they get picked. They’re buying Jake Heke the man — and so they should. Not as if God or sumpthin handed a man his rep on a plate, said, Here, take it. It’s for free. Might be free beers sometimes in this world, but there ain’t free scrapping reps, not with Maoris. You got to earn it. And you got young ones coming up all the time wanting to take it. Us Maoris, man, we used to be warriors. And that mighta been a long time a
go, but you walk into any public bar in the land where there’s Maoris and tell Jake Heke that warriors are a thing of the past. And you only have to look at the league and the rugby teams to see there’s still warriors left in our race.

  Eh Dooly? Jake to his friend driving him to McClutchy’s, They wanna buy us a beer because they’re scared of us, who’re we to argue, eh brother? Yeow, Jake the Muss. Dooly laughing along with his drinking mate. If that’s what turns em on, eh Jake? Lettem. Yeah, lettem.

  Cruising slowly down Jake’s street, no hurry, no hurry. We got all night. And Dooly telling Jake, I hope they there in good numbers tonight, bro, cause I ain’t got any bread. Jake sitting up at that. Wha’? How come, man? You only got your dole yesterday. Frowning at Dooly. Wondering aloud if Dooly’d lost his unemployment, or his share of it, which Jake assumed to be around the half mark, on the horses, maybe a card game. But no, Dooly shaking his head and telling a man he gave it all to his missus this week because they had bills. Up to fuckin here, man. Slicing with his hand at chin level. All of it? Jake couldn’t believe his ears. Bills, brother. Got to pay the bills. Who says so? The fullas who send the bills, man. Dooly’s laugh unsure because he’d picked up Jake’s loaded tone in the Fuckem. That’s what I say, but the missus she says pay. Jake twisted hard in his seat to Dooly: What, she just comes up to you and says gimmee? She sure does, brother. And you leter? Man, I ain’t got no choice. Not ’nless we wanna run around the house with no power on having to cook over — Aw, c’mon, Dool. Come on what, man? You know what. Jake — Dooly slowing right down and looking at his mate — we don’t pay the bills we don’t fuckin eat. You the one told me that yourself! But Jake shaking his head, No way, Dool. Half. Half what, man? Ta give the bitch half, and she can’t run a house on half, kick the bitch out. Aw c’mon, Jake. No fuckin c’mons, man. But I like my missus. Jake’s eyes flashing briefly wide as the sentence tried to cognite in his mind. Then his face relaxing when he rejected the pronouncement as his friend meaning he liked his missus for what she had on live-in tap for his choice of taking — her sex. So he chuckled and said, Yeah, sure, bro. Sure.