Settlers' Creek (5 page)

He carried the cold bottle back to the table and drank slowly, savouring it. After all, he had time — there was nothing but time now.

When he had finished he put the empty bottle down next to his unopened sandwich. He felt slightly better; calmer, more capable of dealing with the roaring freight train that had come hurtling around the corner towards him. Box gave it a couple of minutes, then went up to the counter and bought himself another beer.

He was three-quarters of the way through his fourth bottle when his cellphone went again. This time he checked the caller ID before answering — Mitch again.

‘Where the fuck are you?’

‘Listen, Mitch.’

‘You said you’d be over at George Street two hours ago. That useless prick Taylor has still got his phone off. The whole cunt of a day’s going down the toilet. So where are you?’

‘Listen.’

‘What?’

‘There’s been an accident.’

‘Where, on the site?’

‘No, back home. My son, Mark.’

‘Christ, oh shit, Box. I’m sorry. Is he okay?’

‘No. He died. He’s dead.’

There was a pause. ‘Jesus, Box. What happened?’

‘An accident.’

‘A car accident?’

Box didn’t reply. He stared at the television screen until Mitch said, ‘Where are you now?’

‘I’m at the airport. I’m waiting for a flight home.’

Another pause and he could hear Mitch breathing. The air from the heating vent flowed down over him, pressing like water. Mitch’s breath rasped out of the phone into Box’s ear. Box got a sudden premonition of how it was going to be from then on in, of the awkwardness that would hover around him as people struggled to find the right thing to say. So, sorry to hear about … I was really sorry to hear that … And Mitch didn’t even know what had really happened. ‘Accident’ was just — what was the word? — a euphemism.

‘Can you do me a favour, Mitch?’

‘Sure, anything.’

‘My ute’s out here at the airport, in the car park. Could you get a couple of guys to come out and pick it up?’

‘Sure. No problem, Box. I’ll get it done today.’

‘I’ll leave the keys at the Air New Zealand booking desk.’

‘I’ll get someone to drive it back up for you. You’re going to need it for getting around.’

‘Don’t go to any trouble.’

‘I need a couple of guys to come up here anyway.’

‘Thanks, Mitch. I’d appreciate it.’

‘No problem. Anything else?’

Box could hear how relieved Mitch was to be back talking practicalities.

‘No, thanks.’

‘Anything you think of that you need just give me a call.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Take care. And I’m sorry.’

Box ended the call. He picked up the beer bottle and drank what was left in a single open-throated swill. The television screen was showing the ponytailed blonde on the skifield again. She swept to a stop in a high spray of powder snow and pulled up her goggles with one gloved hand. Her face was unblemished and her teeth were as white as the snow. She flashed Box a smile. He raised his empty bottle to her.

Box stood up and for a moment he swayed. He sat back down again. Better eat the sandwich. He ripped open the plastic and the smell of ham and soft glutinous bread had him salivating even before he bit into it. He was surprised to find that he was starving. But what was a ham sandwich without a beer? After all he still had an hour and a half to go before his flight. He stood, more carefully this time, and went up to the counter and ordered another two beers. Just trying to be efficient.

By the time he heard the boarding call for his flight, Box had lost track of how many beers he’d downed. Half a dozen, give or take. Actually, it was probably more on the give side of the equation. Thankfully, the young woman
had kept coming over and taking the empty bottles away so that he’d lost track of the exact number. After a while every beer seemed to be his third. With half an hour to go before boarding he’d forced himself to follow the ham sandwich with what, when he was young, used to be a toasted cheese sandwich. Now it was called a panini. It sat uneasily in his stomach.

His plane’s number came over the public address system. Box stood cautiously, wavered, then found his sea legs — his plane legs, maybe. Ha ha. Not that he was on the plane yet, eh. Whatever. He picked up the plastic bag containing his wet clothes and walked over to security. On the way he bought a packet of chewing gum from the newspaper stand and popped three pieces into his mouth. There was no point in advertising that he’d been drinking. Box didn’t feel that he was drunk — not staggering, fall-down and make a fool of himself drunk anyway. But he suspected that there’d be rules about letting passengers aboard, even if they were only half cut.

Box grinned at the uniformed guys standing by the security gate. He put the plastic bag in the shallow grey tray and it was fed through the dark tunnel of the X-ray. Then he walked through the metal detector and was ridiculously grateful when it remained silent. His flight was boarding. He queued behind a woman with a baby, then handed over his boarding pass and was allowed through into the long square-edged corridor that led to the plane. He tried not to breathe on the attendant who stood inside the door of the aeroplane and welcomed him on to the flight. She flashed him a regulation smile and ran her eyes over his clothes. Sandwiched between two other passengers, he shuffled his way up the aisle.

The belly of the plane was smaller than he’d thought it would be: a long hollow metal tube with only two seats on each side of the aisle. 9A. It was next to the window. There was a woman already sitting in the aisle seat. She smiled up at him.

‘You can sit by the window if you want,’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘No, thank you. I don’t like being able to see out.’

She undid her seat-belt and stood to let Box pass. He guessed that she was in her early sixties but she was dressed younger in bright red jeans and a black polo-neck top. Her hair was a platinum bob. Box could see her working in a flower shop. Or better yet, he imagined her as a real estate agent, showing people through a house, talking up the possibilities. As she edged out into the aisle he saw her look him up and down and he wondered what she made of the sweatshirt and the surfer shorts, the muddy boots. If he had her pegged as a real-estate agent, what did she think he was? He moved past her and sat down.

‘What a terrible day,’ she said as she was refastening her seatbelt.

‘Yeah.’

‘Are you flying up to the city for work?’

‘No.’ Because he didn’t want to be rude and because he was drunk he kept talking. ‘I live there. I’ve been working down here.’ And then he surprised himself and asked, ‘Do you have any children?’

She smiled. ‘Three boys, but they’re grown up now. They have families of their own. Well, two of them do.’

‘When my son, Mark, was seven I wanted him to play rugby.’

She blinked once. ‘My eldest played at school.’

Box was staring at the back of the seat in front of him, not really listening to her. ‘I used to take him along on a Saturday morning. I made a point of it even when I was busy at work. He was pretty good, faster than most of the other boys. I thought he might really go somewhere with it. I guess every father dreams of his kid being an All Black, right? But when he was twelve he told his mother and me that he wanted to play soccer. Football. That’s what they call it now. He joined the local club, Wanderers. Just went down by himself one summer and registered, paid with his own money. I was annoyed. It seemed silly to give up rugby like that. But he liked the soccer and by the time he was fifteen he was playing for the club’s second team and then the year after that he was in the top squad. Mark was the youngest by at least a couple of years.’

‘You must be proud.’

He could hear that she wasn’t that interested, that he was losing her, but he didn’t care. He was talking more to himself anyway. She just happened to be sitting next to him. He wondered if she could smell the beer yet — on his breath or leaking out of his pores. The gum could only mask so much.

‘Mark was a defender. He was big enough to hold his own, solid.’

‘I see.’ She rummaged in the pouch in front of her and took out the airline magazine and began to flick through it.

‘That year he made the under-seventeen reps. There was talk of a place in the national trials.’

‘That’s marvellous.’

‘It never happened. He decided that he didn’t want to play any more. One day, for no real reason we could see, he gave up completely. Just like that.’

She was looking at him again. ‘Teenagers can be funny. I remember Ian went through a tricky phase.’

‘I got on his case about it. I wasn’t happy. I should’ve respected his decision.’

‘Maybe, but sometimes children, teenagers especially, have to be talked around. Or at least it’s their parents’ job to try.’ She let out a surprisingly shrill laugh to punctuate her sentence.

‘We argued for days on and off. If I hadn’t gone in so hard he might have changed his mind.’

‘Or not.’

‘He was stubborn right from when he was a little kid, wouldn’t back down. I could put him in his room or send him out to the garage. Even a whack on the back of the leg if he went over the line wouldn’t get him to back down. There was a look he got.’

Box lowered his head so that his chin was against his chest and closed his eyes. He puffed air out through his nose. It was a bad idea to close his eyes. In the dark he lost his bearings. When the cabin seemed to go into a tail spin he opened his eyes again and tried to focus on the back of the seat.

‘Are you all right?’

He was starting to make her nervous. She began to look intently at her magazine. He imagined that she must have got a good blast of his breath by now.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to go on.’

She smiled tightly. ‘No, that’s fine. How old is your son now?’

‘Nineteen.’

‘It’s a good age. I think around nineteen boys really start to come into their own. Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll read for a while.’

Box didn’t reply, couldn’t. He quickly turned his head and looked out the small window. The oval window, he thought — like the one they used to have on that kids’ show,
Play School
. ‘What’s through the oval window today?’ they used to ask. And then there’d be some footage, of a lamb or a mountain in spring or clouds. There were clouds. The plane was in the air, flying through dark clouds that pressed in close so that even the tip of the wing was sometimes lost in the haze. Raindrops were rolling across the surface of the thick glass, driven by the rushing air. He had no memory of the plane taxiing down the runway or even of the thrusting shove in the chest that was taking off. Still feeling nauseous, Box stared out through the window, watching the jet engine and the way the rain-visible air rolled up and over the curve of the wing. The plane shuddered and dropped slightly in a patch of turbulence.

Box apologised and got quickly up. He had to bend his head to fit under the overhead locker. The woman managed to half turn in her seat as Box flattened himself and pushed past her. He almost ran up the aisle. Rows of faces swivelled towards him. At the back of the plane the flight attendant was still seated. She frowned as Box slipped into the only toilet and folded the door closed. The bright light snapped on at roughly the same time as Box pulled off his cap and was violently sick into the shallow plastic sink. He threw up again and the stench of bile, cheese, ham and yeasty beer filled the plastic coffin. His vomit sat in the sink in a chunky lake the colour of rust. He retched up a watery soup until there was nothing left inside him.

When he was sure that he was finished, Box lifted his head and looked at his face. He was pressed up close to the mirror. The bright fluorescent light showed every clammy
pore, stunted stubble hair and sunspot, and every faded ginga freckle. There was beaded sweat on his forehead. He ran the tap, and using one finger and paper towels cleaned up the sink the best he could. He cupped water in his hand and drank, sloshing it around in his acid mouth before spitting into the sink, avoiding his own gaze.

When, finally, he was ready, Box took a deep breath and folded back the door. He didn’t know how long he’d been in there but two people were waiting. Box imagined that they’d heard most of his little performance, as had the flight attendant. He walked back down the aisle. The woman in the red jeans had shifted to a vacant seat halfway down the plane. She didn’t look at Box as he passed.