Dunger (11 page)




 

The rain starts before dawn, at first lightly brushing the roof, then getting so loud that it drums out conversation. The temperature has dropped too, so nobody minds when Lissy lights the fire for breakfast. There is plenty of dry firewood stacked on the verandah. I bring wood inside and put it on the hearth while Lissy cooks crumbed fish and fried eggs with tomatoes.

We tell Grandma and Grandpa about the possum but I'm not sure they hear us. They are tired after yesterday's fishing trip and they walk as though dragging heavy weights. After breakfast, Grandpa goes back to bed for extra sleep, and Grandma brings out her battery radio from the bedroom, tuned to some talk programme. No music, just blah, blah about threatened fish species. We all had fish for breakfast. But saving the planet is always about what other people should be doing, never us. Right? I tell Grandma that and she says, “Shut your cake-hole, boy, I'm listening to the wireless.”

Lissy needs more firewood, so I go out to the verandah to get an armful. I can see the bay through the trees, grey, choppy and blurred by heavy rain. The wind is coming up and swirling rain in over the verandah. No bird-calls this morning, only water noises, rain on the iron roof, rain on the road and underneath that, the roar of a rain-filled stream.

Inside, we hear rain hissing in the chimney, but the fire is bright orange and the oven is hot.

“Want to make some bread?” Lissy asks.

“Not particularly.”

“Go on,” she says. “It's easy.”

For once she's right. It is easy, and with Grandpa asleep there is nothing else to do, although I resent the way Lissy makes me scrub my hands twice over before I start, as though I've been handling cyanide. Kneading bread reminds me of playing with modelling clay at kindergarten, and the way we'd flick it off our rulers to make it stick on the ceiling. I have no doubt that bread dough would work just as well, but fortunately I have outgrown the desire to try it.

While the dough is rising, Lissy and I have a game of Scrabble. I win, as usual, and she says I cheated, as usual. I tell her I don't know why anyone with such a limited vocabulary would want to play Scrabble. She gets so annoyed that she takes over the bread-making and won't allow me to put the loaves in the oven. I appeal to Grandma. I mean, what kind of logic confuses a word game with baking bread? But I think Grandma is on Melissa's side because of the useless cell phone. She not only allows my sister to finish the bread, she also tells her she can use the bach phone to contact her friend Herewini in Queenstown.

Melissa goes to the phone. The process is easy enough, turn the handle three times and when someone at the telephone exchange answers, you give the number you want. But that is too difficult for my sister. “No one is answering,” she says, “There's a strange crackling noise.”

“It's the possum ringing its friend,” I tell her, but she doesn't laugh so I say, “Here, I'll do it for you.”

I grind the handle, lift the phone and wait. Actually, she's right. There is no voice, merely a crackling sound. “Something's wrong,” I shout at Grandma.

“Storm,” says Grandma. “It'll be a tree over the line somewhere. Don't worry. They'll be in tomorrow to fix it.”

I ask, “How will they know to come in and fix it, if we can't tell them it's broken?”

“Don't ask silly questions!” Grandma says.

I think it is a perfectly reasonable question and it's her answer that's silly, but I will not waste time in argument. I look at Melissa, who is close to tears, and I don't tell her that this is just another example of her persistent bad luck.

 

 

Will is one of those kids who get bored easily, like a grasshopper on hot sand, Dad once said, although it's just Will's head that tends to be hyperactive, thoughts bouncing from one thing to another with no gaps in-between. What is extremely annoying is his need to always be right. He'll create arguments out of nothing, just so he can have the last word. It is very tiring.

I remember the day he started school. He was really cute then, this cool little kid who wouldn't let go of my hand. My friends thought he was adorable. Now they see him as a gigantic pain. I sincerely hope he grows out of it.

The bread comes out of the oven, two perfect loaves. Does that please him? No, he wants to know why the oven doesn't have a thermometer on the door, and the answer – that it is a very old stove – does not stop him.

“Why not put a thermometer on it? It would save guesswork and failure.”

Grandma doesn't answer. I think her deafness is sometimes selective.

He stands in front of her. “I'm surprised you and Grandpa haven't thought of doing that.”

“Oh, shut up, Will,” I tell him.

So he turns on me. “I kneaded your bread dough for twenty minutes, all my work put into an oven of unknown temperature. Is that practical? It could have burned. It could have been raw.”

“The bread is perfectly cooked.”

“That's sheer chance!”

“No!” I tell him. “Grandma told me when to take it out. She could smell it.”

He will not give in. “The oven door needs a thermometer. They could easily get one and stick it on with heatproof glue and then you'd know –”

He doesn't finish the sentence, because Grandpa appears, rubbing his hands together. “A good afternoon for the garage!” he says to Will.

Grasshopper Will is onto the next thing. “What are we doing?”

“You know those surf-casting rods in the roof?” says Grandpa. “We can take the reels to bits and fix them. Have you ever cast from the beach for snapper?”

“I've read about it,” Will says.

“That's like reading about swimming,” Grandpa says. “But I'll show you and your sister. You can have a rod each.”

Will gives me a look, like the glare when Grandpa asked me to drive the boat, but he doesn't say anything. I smile at Grandpa and say thank you several times.

Lunch is potato and watercress soup with warm bread, then Grandpa and Will go out to the garage, taking one of the lanterns because the day is so dark with rain.

Grandma switches off her radio and gets out her knitting: big needles, thick wool. She has a large plastic bag full of knitting yarns, and I sort them into balls of different thicknesses. While I'm winding a skein of green bouclé wool, she says, “I'm told you don't like our conversations.”

I look at her. “What conversations?”

“Your grandfather and I. You and your brother have a problem with the way we communicate.” She puts her knitting down in her lap, which is her way of expecting a response.

I'm nervous. She's been told whatever it was that my stupid brother said to Grandpa last night. “You mean – Will?”

She doesn't answer, just stares at me with those strong blue eyes that are about as useful as my phone.

I go on winding the green wool. “It's just – just that you seem to fight a lot.”

She nods. “Is that what you call it? Fighting?”

“Um, well, yes, it sort of sounds like it.”

She grunts, then says, “We're not around kids much, these days. It's easy to forget how young you are.” She picks up her knitting and pushes one of the thick needles into a stitch. “So you think we fight, eh? I'll tell you this, girlie. You have to be very close to have that kind of freedom, very close indeed.” Two more stitches and she says, “What about you and William?”

I look at her.

“You fight,” she says.

“That's different,” I say. “He's my brother. He's not –”

“Not what?”

Since she's asking, I have to say it. “I just know I will
never
fight like that when I have a husband!”

She laughs. I've told her something seriously serious, and she's treating it as a joke. I remember Will suggesting that she and Grandpa thought they were normal and we weren't, but that doesn't stop me from feeling angry. I sort out an appropriate answer. “I believe there's a peaceful resolution to every problem,” I tell her.

There is another burst of laughter, and she says, “I said the same things at your age!”

I put down the ball of wool and make the excuse that I need to go to the outhouse. The rain is heavy and there is no such thing as an umbrella, but there is a sheet of plastic by the door that I can put over my head. I run across the sodden grass and fling open the wooden slat door. How dare she say that I am like her! Imagine it! Comparing my little brother and me to an old married couple! I know she's old and probably getting dementia, but really, there is no excuse. I sit for ages, thinking about it. She always has to have the last say. That must be where Will gets his overwhelming desire to be right from.

Water thuds on the outhouse roof, reminding me of last night's possum. With the plastic sheet over my head, I open the door.

As I go towards the house, Will comes running out of the garage. He almost bumps into me, stops, stares at me like I'm some kind of monster. His face is wet. He looks terrified. “Grandpa!” he whispers.

“What's wrong?” I ask.

He starts to cry. “I think Grandpa's dead.”

 

 

It happens like this. We are going to take the reels off the surf-casting rods that lie on a rack under the garage roof. The rack is like a little mezzanine floor under the peak, too high for us to reach, although I can see the ends of the rods sticking out like handles on a wheelbarrow.

Grandpa looks around. “Where's that ladder?”

We both remember where it is, against the macrocarpa tree I cut the day before yesterday, only now the rain is pouring down like a waterfall and neither of us wants to go out to carry a wet ladder. We look through the curtain of water that falls over the door. Grandpa says, “Likely as not our water pipe'll be washed out again.”

“I'll go up the stream tomorrow and fix it,” I tell him.

“Tomorrow's no good. You have to wait until the flood subsides.” He pats me on the head. “Nature's a good teacher, laddie. When there's tons of water outside, you've got to be careful with it inside. Pipe gets washed out, no water running into the tank, you can't fix it until the stream's gone down. Good excuse for not having a bath.”

“What about the ladder?” I ask.

He's not listening. “Look at those trees in the rain. You ever notice the way they produce branches the same design?”

I say yes, but I don't know what he's talking about.

“No matter what tree you look at, the branch is the same shape as the tree it's growing on. Look at the pine, the manuka! Every tree! That's nature for you, boyo, design expert number one. ”

“The ladder!” I remind him.

“Forget the ladder,” he says, turning back into the garage. “This'll do it.” He tips a round drum of oil on its edge, and rolls it under the surf-casting rods. “Give me a bit of a help up, eh?”

We should do it the other way around. I don't weigh too much. If Grandpa lifts me high enough, I can reach the rods, but for some reason, I don't tell him that. Instead, I let him put his hand on my shoulder so he can hoist himself up on the drum. He stands, feet together inside the rim, and raises his right arm. His hand is shaking. He brings it to the end of one of the rods and holds on for a moment, as though he is thinking what he should do next.

“Can I help?” I ask.

He doesn't answer. His hand comes down and rests at the top of his jacket as he makes that huffing noise. It was what he did at the Hoffmeyers' place, a sound somewhere between a fast breath and a cough.

“Grandpa?”

Then he falls sideways. It happens too fast for me to do anything. He just drops. Like the tree branch. The oil drum skids across the floor with a screech and Grandpa's head hits the floor.

“Grandpa, are you all right?”

Of course he isn't all right. His eyes are almost closed and his face is the same colour as the concrete. Blood comes out of his nose. I try to lift his head up but it falls back again. I pull my hands away and there is blood on my fingers.

That's when I run out into the rain and see Lissy.

“Grandpa!” My voice is choked.

“What's wrong?” she says.