Settlers' Creek (23 page)

Box drove until he was as close to the farmhouse as he could get in the ute and then stopped. He got out and began walking over the grass towards the house, the beam of his torch shining on the ground in front of him. The grass was long and the ground was rocky beneath his boots and he had to tread carefully. He didn’t want to twist an ankle. Still close to the road, he came across the remains of a fenceline. The posts had mostly fallen and even those ones that were still standing had rotted almost to nothing. A single strand of rusted barbed wire lay on
the ground. He stepped over it and carried on.

Up close, Box could see that the building was even older than he’d thought. It was definitely deserted. Christ, it was half falling down. As his grandfather would have said, it was just the borer holding hands that were keeping it standing. He climbed up onto the front porch, testing each step with his boots before putting his weight down on the wooden boards. The front door was locked, rattled in its frame. The glass in the window of the single front room was broken but at some point someone had nailed planks across the hole. Now even that wood was lichen covered and soft, crumpling at the edges when he touched it with his hand. He shone his torch between the gaps in the wood but couldn’t see much beyond a dusty square of barren floor.

By the look of it, what had started out as a couple of rooms had been added on to as time and money allowed. It was a patchwork building, cobbled together by generations. The scattered flotsam of a farming life lay around outside. His torchlight picked out parts of farm machinery among the long grass: plough blades, cogs, an ancient tractor wheel — all cannibalised and rusted.

Box searched around until he found an overgrown track leading back up to the road. He walked up it, occasionally stamping down big gorse plants and, where the gorse was too thick, working out the easiest way to go around in the ute. He drove down to the house and parked so that the ute would be at least partially hidden from anyone who happened to appear on the road.

The back door’s lock gave so easily that Box almost fell backwards down the wooden steps, the crowbar still in his hand. The door opened directly into the small kitchen.
Box stood, shining his torch, sniffing at the stale stench that wafted out. He found a light switch and gave it a flick — wishful thinking. The bare wooden floor was coated with a layer of dust as thick as the moon dust that Armstrong had left his footsteps in. When Box walked forward a few steps it rose up into his nostrils, dry and clogging. He coughed. But it wasn’t just the dust. The place had the sickly sweet smell of mummified death. Maybe a bird or a possum had somehow got in and been unable to find its way out again. An animal would blunder around in here for days until dying of dehydration.

Box had built modern houses with pantries that were bigger than this kitchen. Scattered pellets of mouse crap littered the narrow wooden bench but even that looked desiccated and ancient, like mouse crap in a particularly authentic museum exhibit.

He tried to imagine a woman cooking three meals a day in here, on the wood-fired stove, for her husband and, more than likely, for four or five kids. Maybe she’d had to cook for a farm worker as well, or a few shearers, during the spring.

Off the kitchen was a small lounge. River stones had been worked into a fireplace. Box guessed that this was the original room onto which everything else had been tacked. He ran his hand over the smooth stones. The craftsmanship was evident in the choice and placing of each stone. Box bent low and pointed his torch up into the chimney. He could see stars. If he could find some dry wood he’d be able to get the fire going. Box made the decision to stay.

Going out to the ute, he fetched his pack and carried it inside. He left it leaning against the edge of the fireplace while he explored the rest of the house. There were two
bedrooms. One was completely empty. The other contained the skeletal remains of a wooden bed frame but no mattress. Box went outside again to look for some firewood. A lean-to on the west side of the house had collapsed, obviously years ago. Box dragged away the rusted iron roof, feeling the reluctant tug of the grass roots that had grown through the iron. He got lucky. There were half a dozen long pieces of manuka lying underneath.

Two at a time he lugged the thick branches around to the back step. With his torch propped up so that the light shone onto where he was working against the bottom step, Box used his saw to cut the wood into pieces that would fit into the fireplace. When he was finished he was breathing like a draught horse and his lower back was slick and prickly with sweat.

He carried the cut wood inside and stacked it by the fireplace. Then he dismantled the bed in the first bedroom and took the doors off the cupboards in the kitchen. He broke them with the heel of his boot. After an hour he had just about enough wood to see him through the night. He stacked the kindling in the fireplace, making a small tepee into which he shoved toilet paper, and then lit the lot with one of the long waterproof matches he kept in a plastic container in his backpack.

When the wood was burning well, he added the two smallest cuts of manuka, and then later a piece of the bed frame. Light and heat spilled out into the room. Box wondered when this house had last seen a fire.

With the fire going, Box carried Mark inside. He wished he had a table to keep the body away from the dust and the blowfly husks strewn over the floor, but there was nothing; the kitchen bench was too narrow. He laid Mark down on
the floor away from the heat of the fire, but still in the circle of light coming from the flames. Box wished that he had words to say over the boy; something he’d memorised that he could drag out now, words that would wash over them both like warm water. But he had nothing like that stored away in his mind. There was no poem that he could think of; not even the words of a hymn came to mind. So the boy lay on the dusty floor shrouded in the grey army blanket.

For a long time Box sat next to him, knees drawn up to his chest, thinking about Liz and Heather.

He couldn’t help remembering what the old woman at the marae had said. Liz had always told him that it was Steven — Tipene, now — who’d taken himself out of Mark’s life. Liz said that he’d never made any attempt to keep in touch with the boy. She’d implied that Tipene didn’t want to know. And that had suited Box just fine.

Box thought about how tight the three of them had been in the early years, up in Nelson, after they got married. What if Tipene had tried to see the boy back then? Could Liz really have told him to back right off? She might’ve been afraid that things would be strained with the boy’s biological father on the scene. She could’ve been worried about how Box would react. Now he wanted to ask her but it would have to wait.

He wondered what she was doing at that moment. The bones in his buttocks had began to ache from sitting on the wooden floor. ‘Good night, Tiger.’ He stood stiffly, like an old man, and moved closer to the fire.

Asleep and then awake, as if a door into his head had been rudely flung open. Box lay on his back in his sleeping bag, staring up at the ceiling. Pale morning light had fought its way into the room through the cracks between the boards nailed over the window, but he had no idea what time it was. His internal body clock seemed to have stopped, leaving him in limbo, and the fire gave him no clue, except that it had died down to nothing. The cold from outside had come back into the room through the uninsulated walls, and up from that dank space between the ground and the rough-cut wooden planks on which Box had slept.

He groaned and rolled over and dust swirled up around him and made him cough. He was grateful for his Fairydown sleeping bag — good to minus thirty. Not that it had got down to that. But cold enough; brass monkey stuff.

He thought again about Liz and Heather and whether they were awake yet. Or if they’d even slept.

There was that stench, sweetly rank. The night before,
he’d searched through all the rooms, opening the cupboards and peering inside with the torch, but had found no sign of a dead bird or other animal. Maybe something had died up in the ceiling space and this smell was its parting fuck-you to the world.

Box peeled open his sleeping bag. Apart from his bush shirt and his boots he was fully dressed. In his heavy socks he padded over to the fire and threw on two pieces of bark. He crouched down and blew, and was happy to see the embers blaze. He added some kindling and low flames sprang up immediately.

Box went to the window. He could see out through the top left-hand corner where the boards didn’t quite overlap. There had been a hard frost. The paddock sported a silvery number-two cut, spiky and rough.

He would wash. That might make him feel more human. And he needed water to make a cup of tea. There were a couple of bags in his pack. Coffee would have been better but black gumboot tea would do, along with a plate of baked beans that he would heat over the fire. Box felt better having a plan, even if it only stretched for an hour into the future.

Pulling on his boots and his bush shirt, he went outside. He walked back to the ford carrying a billy hooked over one arm and an old beach towel in which was wrapped a toothbrush and a crusted tube of toothpaste.

When he’d tried to turn on his cellphone the screen had stayed blank. He’d taken the battery out and put it back in. Not a flicker. The most likely explanation was that the battery needed charging, not that he’d thought to bring the charger with him. Without his phone, all he knew was that it was early enough for the shadow of the mountain
to the east to still be hanging over the valley. The grass was frosted so stiff that the blades didn’t bend but shattered under his boots. There was absolutely no wind and when he looked behind him he could see the riverflats and the smoke rising directly from the chimney of the farmhouse, drifting sideways and slowly dissolving.

At the ford Box squatted and, cupping the water in both hands, splashed water up over his face and rubbed his wet palm over the back of his gritty neck. Then he knelt down and poured water from the billy over the bare skin of his head until his scalp tingled.

On the other side of the creek the bush was so thick that he couldn’t see more than a couple of metres into the green foliage. As he stood and dried his head with the towel he looked around. There was no sign of anything out of the ordinary: certainly no vengeful Maori, only the frosted valley and the mountains covered in bush so tree-tangled and steep that it would take him half a day just to bush-bash a quarter of the way up one of the slopes. Box brushed his teeth and spat into the grass by his feet.

There was a dog.

He caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye and turned back to the river. The dog stood perfectly still and watched him. It must have come out of the bush, slipping between the tree trunks and the heavy undergrowth, and was now standing about five metres from Box, with just the shallow river between them. Small brown eyes watched him from inside a heavy-set skull. The dog was no discernible breed that Box could tell — maybe part Labrador, or quarter kelpie — just a mongrel dog, built low to the ground and solid through the shoulders. But whatever breed, it was close enough to the type of red-eyed
monster you saw pictured in the newspaper after some kid had been mauled to make Box stand perfectly still.

The dog twitched and darted left down the bank, then turned and ran back to where it had appeared. Making up its mind, it bounded into the water. It was across in the time it took Box to take three steps backwards. He froze as the dog circled him. It was sniffing Box’s boots and his legs, its breath leaving small puffs of white vapour in the cold air. Now that the dog was up close Box saw that it had dark brown fur over its whole body except for one shoulder where the fur was lighter, almost tan. There were several old scars on its shoulder and more on its flanks and what looked like bloodstains on its muzzle.

Just as Box was getting used to the idea of a dog appearing from the bush, another emerged: a big yellow mutt this time with scar tissue running in a thick seam down one side of its face just above its eye. This dog didn’t pause before charging across the river. It began to bark, deep and booming. The sound echoed off the sides of the mountains. Then another dog arrived, more like the first. And another, smaller with hips like a greyhound, and then another. They were all barking loudly now, circling Box.

The pack — five dogs all up — were moving around him, barking and jostling and sniffing. He hadn’t moved since the first dog reached him. Box knew that if one of this lot decided to attack him and the others joined in then he was royally screwed. His knife was back at the house. But even with the knife it would have been only a matter of seconds before they brought him down. They’d have his flesh shredded and his throat ripped out before he could even land a decent kick. For the moment, though, they seemed happy to mill around his feet in a yellow and
tan and brown pool, almost churning themselves to butter in their excitement.

There was more movement from the far side of the creek. Box was expecting to see yet another dog but instead a man appeared. He had a thick dark beard and was wearing a mud-and blood-stained Swanndri. Tied around his shoulders so that it appeared to be hugging him from behind was a large black pig. Its long snout and white tusks protruded above the man’s head. Box could see one of the pig’s eyes, glassy and half lidded.

The man stood and stared across the river, then, with one movement, heaved off the pig so that it fell to the ground.

‘G’day,’ he said. ‘I see you’ve met the dogs.’

Box half raised a hand, which he realised was still holding his toothbrush. ‘Hello there,’ he said. ‘Nice morning for it.’

For a man who spent days alone up in the bush, Bruce Deans liked to talk. Not that Box minded that much. It was good to hear a voice apart from his own.

He stood with Deans on the front porch of the house and listened to his tales. Mostly they were to do with hunting and fishing — the ones that he’d caught and the bigger ones (of course) that had got away. They were both on to their second cup of tea and Deans was steadily working his way through Box’s packet of gingernuts. Occasionally, Box sensed that the pig hunter was running his eyes over his battered face but the other man didn’t comment. Nor did he ask how Box came to be squatting in a previously locked farmhouse on what was undoubtedly private property.

The sun was hitting the house and the dogs circled
slowly below them. The dead boar lay on the grass. There were no bullet holes in the carcass, just a few visible bite marks from where the dogs had held on and the opening at its neck where Deans had used his knife. Somewhere up in the bush the belly had been sliced, leaving pink flaps like lips, and the guts removed. The bristles that covered its body were long and black and thick. Deans pulled a narrow bar of chocolate from a hidden pocket. He broke off a piece and offered it to Box.

‘Thanks.’ The chocolate was soft from the other man’s body heat and tasted sweeter than Box remembered chocolate being. The dogs smelled it and began to whine.

‘Chocolate’s no good for dogs,’ said Deans. ‘A whole block could finish off one of this lot. It’s hard enough finding a good pig dog without bloody Cadburys killing them off.’

Box wondered if Deans had any Maori blood in him. His hair and his beard were dark enough but his eyes were a pale blue.

Box took a sip of his bitter tea and looked down at the dead boar. ‘Those tusks look nasty.’

‘I’ve seen a tusker like that rip a dog right open.’

‘Then what d’ya do?’

Deans’s broad shoulders rose and fell in a slow shrug. ‘Depends. Sometimes you can just stitch a dog up on the spot. But if their guts are all over the forest floor then you’ve got to put them down. It happens. You ever hunted pigs?’

‘Deer.’

‘Oh, the easy stuff.’

‘It has its moments. I once tracked a wapiti for three days.’

‘Yeah, but when was the last time a wapiti turned and charged you?’

‘Not a wapiti. It’s the chamois that have a really nasty streak.’

The corner of Deans’s mouth twitched.

Box sipped his tea in the sunlight and watched the dog that he had first seen down by the ford — Deans had called it Mac — sniffing under the edge of the door. Two others joined it. They whined in unison.

‘There’s something in there they want to get at,’ said Deans. Box thought of Mark lying on the floor in his grey shroud. When he’d boiled the water for the tea over the fire the other man had waited outside, no questions asked.

‘Something’s died up in the ceiling. There’s quite a pong.’

Deans grunted. ‘You planning on doing any hunting up here?’

Box shook his head. ‘I’m just having a look around.’

‘Fair enough.’

Box was grateful that Deans didn’t question him further. He guessed that this far out in the bush most men you bumped into were probably running away from something, things they didn’t want to talk about — a dud marriage, little kids, or a job without glory or challenge.

Out on the riverflats a magpie called, long and warbling. It was answered by another.

‘I’d better get moving,’ said Deans. ‘Thanks for the tea.’

‘That’s fine. Can I give you a lift?’

‘No, it’s not that far up to where I left the truck. Besides, I need the exercise.’

Box watched as Deans heaved the dead hulk of the pig up off the grass and back onto his shoulders. He shouted
his dogs into order, raised his hand to Box in parting, and like a macabre two-headed beast, all black bristles and beard, set off towards the road.

Box was sorry to see him go.