From Under the Overcoat (16 page)

He is covered in eczema, this boy — angry red blotches on the backs of his legs, on his neck and inside his arms. He’s agitated, scratching at himself with his free hand.

The teacher’s voice is calm, free of emotion. His jaw is clenched, sinews in his neck stretched taut, as though he wants to bite the boy. I wonder whether manhandling is
allowed again in schools. I thought not, but I can never keep up with the changes.

‘Well, sorry, but it
was
lame,’ my namesake says.

‘That was rude, and you will apologise,’ says the teacher.

‘No offence,’ this boy says, looking straight at Carole. ‘I just thought it was a bit lame, you know. A bit of a lame joke for a weather person.’

Carole laughs. ‘You’re absolutely right. It is lame. Sometimes I get away with it, and sometimes, when the kids are smart, I don’t.’

‘Watch yourself, Ta-ferry,’ says the teacher. He’s still holding the boy’s arm.

I hear it, clearly, from one of the other boys.
Cheeky darkie
. Sniggers ripple around the group. The teacher tries not to smile.

Patty from public relations has finally caught up with the group. ‘Sorry guys,’ she pants, as she comes through the door. There are little beads of sweat across her top lip, damp half moons under her arms. She glances around the room, looking for me.

‘There you are, Tāwhiri,’ she says.

‘Yes, here I am,’ I reply, and I fold my newspaper and stand.

The visitors swing around, startled to see me — even the teacher, who has forgotten I am in the corner. They look me up and down, trying to place me in the women’s magazines. They take in my grey suit, my white shirt and my meteorological tie, the one with the big H against a bright yellow background. The children — some of them — are sniggering again …
Hey
,
Taferry, he’s your grandad
… I wait for blunt words of reprimand from the teacher but he says nothing.

‘Everybody, over here, please,’ says Patty. ‘This is Tāwhiri. Tāwhiri is our, how shall we say, Tāwhiri?’

Patty’s thin eyebrows almost touch her fringe. I try not to close my eyes but the sudden drop in air pressure is pushing hard against my temples …
Cyclone leaves the strangest of moulds and fungi in its wake
… and when I open my eyes, Patty’s mouth is stretched wide in a tense smile, her teeth clamped together as though she is frightened to breathe the same dehydrating, ageing air as me.

‘I’m the schools’ host,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ Patty shrills.

Great westerly winds summoned by Titokowaru to mask his gun-fire attacks against the land-grabbing British
… I drag myself back to now.

‘Tāwhiri is our host! He was one of our first weather presenters! He’s been here longer than anyone else. How many years now, Tāwhiri?’

I shrug and smile. How many years?

‘A long time anyway,’ says Patty. ‘He could step into that studio and present the weather off the top of his head! Probably … couldn’t you, Tāwhiri.’

I smile again.

‘So. Who knows anything about reading a weather map?’ says Patty.

One of the girls standing next to Tāwhiri-my-namesake says something under her breath. The class sniggers and the girl dances a hip-hop shuffle, fingers pointing to the ground.

The teacher rounds on young Tāwhiri and takes his arm again. I can see that the grip is tight, that the boy must be hurting, but he doesn’t flinch.

‘I warned you, Ta-ferry,’ says the teacher.

The boy closes his eyes and opens them again. ‘It wasn’t me, sir.’ He’s brave, but not so far from tears now.

‘Get out,’ says the teacher. ‘If you insist on ruining it for everyone, just get out.’

The boy moves away from the group, towards the door. I’m surprised he backs down so easily but then I see the faces of his classmates: in this group, he is utterly alone.

I step forward and reach out, letting my hand fall on the teacher’s arm. ‘The boy’s right,’ I say. ‘It wasn’t him.’

The teacher’s eyes roam the length of me — the ancient skin on my hand, my old suit. I see the beginning of a sneer, only the beginning; I leave my hand resting on his bare skin. It cools under my touch. I feel goosebumps rise. The sneer falls away.

‘Oh,’ the teacher says. He would like to say more but cannot.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Oh yes, I’m sure. I was watching, you see.’

‘Alright then.’ He glares at the boy. The boy looks at me.

‘And his name is pronounced Tāwhiri.
Taa-whiri
,’ I say quietly.

The sneer returns, but the teacher says nothing. Soon he will feel a shiver run through his body. For the rest of this stifling, still day he will be chilled to the bone, unable to warm himself up. When the shiver happens, that almost imperceptible quiver, I deliver him my widest, most charming weatherman smile.

Tāwhiri-my-namesake is standing tall again, at the back of the group. Those green eyes are fixed on me now. I meet his stare and hold it.

‘Kia ora koutou. Would anyone like to start with a question?’ I say to the group, and the boy raises his hand. The teacher shakes his head in disbelief.

‘What would you like to know?’ I ask.

‘Everything,’ he says.

‘Where shall I start?’ I say.

‘At the beginning, please.’

The beginning’s so long ago, too long. But when I close my eyes, it’s all there. It’s the boy. With the boy standing there, it is all clear in my mind. I open my eyes. There is only him and me.

THERE WERE SIX OF
us, all boys. I was the youngest. We were the sort of kids who spent all our free time outside; I suppose these days we would be skateboarders, or rugby players. Back then, we found our own fun.

We lived miles away from anyone else. I can’t tell you whether we learned the same things as town kids; our mother just taught us things as we needed to know them.

You know what it’s like when you’re the youngest. You get no say in anything. There’d been this business going on at home, my older brothers getting angry that they were missing out on stuff. Things you could do in towns, like school and sport, girls probably. Anyway, these fights had been going on for a while and Tāne and Tū — they were the oldest — they’d been talking to Mum a lot, when Dad wasn’t listening, trying to get her on their side.

But the thing about Mum was she was stubborn. No matter how much Tāne and Tū would talk to her, trying to
get her to convince Dad to even think about shifting, she wouldn’t listen.
We belong out here, in the country
, she’d say.
We all belong together, out here
.

So.

One time, towards nightfall, we were summoned to hear some news, not by our mother and father, as you might expect, but by Tāne. He stood on the back steps and hollered for all of us. ‘Kia tere, get inside, you guys,’ he called out. ‘There are things to be said.’

The house was a wooden cottage, small for a family of eight. It was on top of a hill, near the sea. Don’t ask me where, I can’t remember. Hei aha, doesn’t matter.

So Tāne stood on the steps and yelled. This was back before there were all the modern gadgets, PlayStations and the like, certainly no cellphones, no texting to get us home. Tangaroa was down at the sea swimming and old green fingers Rongo was round the back, fixing stakes in Mum’s vege garden. Haumia was off in the bush doing who knows what, he spent hours in there and when you asked him what he’d been up to, he’d just shrug his shoulders and say,
This and that
. Looking back now, I have my suspicions as to what he might have been growing in there. But that’s another story.

Where was Tū? Off causing trouble somewhere, of course. He just couldn’t help but pick a fight. I saw him arguing with himself one day, marching along the dusty metal road, bare-chested in his raggy shorts, ranting and raving to himself, waving a long stick, conducting one side of an armed attack on The Enemy, then taking up The Enemy’s position and defending it to the death.

Anyway.

I was just inches away from Tāne. I was hiding under the house, under the step he was standing on. Under the house was where I went when I got the itch. The itch came before a rise or fall in the air temperature; it started in my hair and it spread down my neck, down my back and front. It was a rash that crawled all over my body; I couldn’t stop scratching. It drove me mad and also everyone around me. I’d disappear under the house to get away from everyone so my scratching didn’t annoy them. Once the storms started, the rash would fade and the itching would stop. It was just a matter of waiting it out.

So I was right there as Tāne stomped down the steps. When he stopped to yell, I reached up and laid my hands against the hard underneath of the step, the wood separating me and him. I felt the vibration of his call run through his body, through the soles of his boots, right through the timber and into the palms of my hands. When I lifted my hands away from the wooden surface, the rash was deep and pulsing on my palms. I could feel tiny blisters forming. I listened as he stomped back up the steps.

The first lightning struck just as I was squeezing out through the gap in the weatherboards onto the damp grass. A flash of pale, like a sheet flicking in the wind.

I was crouching on the ground, my head tucked into my shoulders. How many seconds? I guessed at six, and started counting slowly.
One, two, three, four, five
…
six
. The thunder felt as though it was deep in the ground beneath me, more vibrations, like the ones from Tāne’s footsteps. I grinned. I always got it right. I jumped to my feet and took the steps, two at a time, into the house.

I was the last to come in. The storm had knocked the power out, candles were burning in the front room. There were six; two on the mantelpiece, one on the windowsill and three on the wooden table. The candles were always ready, boxes of matches sitting nearby. In those days, the power seemed to be off as often as it was on; any storm would take it out.

Ae, everyone was there. My mother was sitting in the armchair in the corner. My brothers were gathered around her. There was Tāne at the back of the chair, his hand resting on Mum’s shoulder, as though he owned her. On either side were two more, I think Rongo and Haumia, then the other two were sitting at her feet. I thought maybe we were going to have a family photograph taken, maybe that’s what the occasion was, because that’s exactly how everyone looked — all stiff and uncomfortable. I’d probably get told to go and tidy up for the photo, get some decent pants on at least.

Dad was on the other side of the room, standing in the doorway.

IS THE BOY STILL
with me? The others have drifted off elsewhere with Patty, but I don’t care about them.

Yes, he’s there, hasn’t moved all this time. How long have I been talking? The big black clock on the wall says no time at all, but that can’t be right. I’ll speak to someone about the batteries in that clock.

The boy nods at me;
Carry on
is what he’s saying. If he moves away with the others, I will no longer remember.

It is a joy to remember, a joy.

DAD WAS AS TALL
as the doorframe, only just fitting under it as he passed through. His shoulders filled the space sideways. I always thought that one day he had stood quite still in an empty green field, his great arms crossed on his chest, and men had come with their timber and their tools and built our house around him.