Settlers' Creek (8 page)

Box was standing by the barbecue talking to Thumb who was on sausage duty. Thumb had built the barbie himself. It was brick with a real wood fire. The fat from the sausages and the steaks on the black hotplate spat and crackled so that Box stayed back a couple of steps, clutching a cold bottle. The heat rippled the air. As he chatted with Thumb, Box kept noticing this woman. She had long dark hair that was pulled back from her face, black jeans and jandals and a white singlet top. She was slim but not skinny — there were muscles he could see clearly along the backs of her
arms. He later found out that she’d been earning money berry picking over the summer. Brown as a berry herself. He remembered thinking that she had a real presence. There was nothing tentative or artificial about her.

It was clear to Box that she was with the little Maori kid. She wasn’t all over him like some of the mums were with their kids; in fact she didn’t say much to him at all. But she knew where he was, what he was up to. She tracked him with her eyes; even when she was standing, talking with a beer in her hand, she was aware of the boy, she was listening for his sounds, glancing around every now and then for a glimpse of the straight dark hair. Box watched her just keeping track. Which was quite a skill because the kid was like a Muppet on speed — on and off the tramp, tearing around the lawn behind the older boys, balancing on the rail of the deck, scampering in and out of the house. There was a big grin permanently stamped on his brown face.

Only when the boy made a game of lobbing grapefruit onto the roof of the garage did the woman go over and have a word. Trying not to make it obvious that he was staring, Box watched her crouch down, both hands on the boy’s narrow shoulders. She said a few well-chosen words. She took the grapefruit out of his hand and then pointed back towards the trampoline. And he was off again, not fazed, a force of nature.

She looked up and caught Box watching. She smiled and Box felt awkward, like a peeping Tom in the torchlight. He half smiled back and looked away.

Box hadn’t even thought about talking to her, was just interested, that was all. And then there she was standing next to him in the kitchen. They were both getting another beer
from Thumb’s fridge. Even when they were alone in the small space he probably wouldn’t have said more to her than gidday. She was the one who started talking, slipping into conversation as easily as if they’d known each other since they were kids. She started telling him about herself, about her son, Mark, about the people she picked berries with. Eventually they’d got around to giving each other their names.

‘Box?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘What’s your real name?’

‘It’s been so long that I’ve forgotten.’ She grinned.

When the sun went down over Tasman Bay the inside lights were switched on. The light spilled out over the lawn and reflected off the shiny leaves of the citrus trees. Box and Liz sat together, bums up on the wide wooden rail of the deck, and she told him about Mark’s father. But that relationship had been over for almost a year. According to Liz it had barely survived the unexpected pregnancy and then staggered through the first few months of reflux and sleepless nights before Stephen Sullivan had announced that he was off.

It was almost midnight when Box carried the sleeping boy back to the house next door. He watched from the doorway of the bedroom as she put him into his bed. Then they talked some more.

At times Box had wondered if he’d had any choice in the two of them getting married, only nine months after Thumb’s barbecue. Right from that first night it had felt like a done deal. And as for saying the two of them, that wasn’t true either. It had been the three of them really. Liz and Mark were a package. And that had always been fine by him.

Box lay stiff as a board next to Liz and listened to the bass thump coming from the house next door. It was just after midnight. The party had kicked into top gear about an hour ago. He could feel the music thrusting through the walls of the bedroom, vibrating the musty air, jolting the wooden bed frame, rattling his chest like a cage.

Box tried to relax, to sink down into sleep. But his thoughts pinballed backwards and forwards between Mark — my son is dead! Mark is dead! — and the tangled arrangements for the funeral, a rope in the garden shed, and a tree up on the hills overlooking the city. Hanged himself. Dead.

Why the hell were they having a party on a Sunday night? Inconsiderate pricks. There must be people all up and down the street who had jobs to go to the next morning. There were kids who needed to sleep so that they could get up on time and go to school.

In the ten years that they’d lived in the Taylor’s Hill house, before the credit crunch, before house prices tumbled like
a home handyman’s birdhouse in a storm, before all the bad luck that had seemed to fall on him like a biblical curse — he tried to push those endlessly looping thoughts from his mind — anyway, before all of that, there had never been a time when he could remember the neighbours having a loud party.

Actually, now that he thought about it, that wasn’t true. Once, when Jo and Richard Stanton’s daughter had turned nine, things had been a little bit boisterous there for a while. Box remembered looking out from his upstairs bedroom and seeing a colourful flock of shrieking girls on the green square of lawn next door. They were playing some type of variation on stiff candles with their bright party dresses swirling as they ran. But that had all been over with by dinnertime.

Box opened his eyes and stared up at the water-stained ceiling. A series of images came to him from another birthday party. Mark must have been turning six, maybe seven. He’d become too excited by all the attention — that was normal, the way kids got. Maybe it was the excitement of all the presents, the colouring in the jellybeans — who knew — but the boy was acting up. Mark had started yelling and crying when some game or other didn’t go his way. Box had ended up frogmarching him down to his room. He’d locked him in there with instructions to settle down. Mark had almost been beside himself with rage and indignation and had started shouting and throwing his stuff around. Box had fired up and — he should have just walked away — he’d gone back in. A heavy truck had been thrown at him. Box had smacked the boy around the legs a couple of times. He wasn’t out of control. It had just been a couple of open-handed whacks around the back of the leg.

Box winced and rolled over. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Even lying on his back in bed his shoulders were bunched up around his ears. Liz groaned and rolled over next to him.

‘Do you want me to call noise control?’

Box grunted. ‘Like last time? They’ll make them turn it down for ten minutes and then when they leave some pissed drongo will turn it straight back up.’

Cars were pulling up on the street. He could hear the doors slamming, a counter-beat to the bass thump of the music. There was loud laughter, girl shrieks and drunken shouts of greeting. Although it was a cool autumn night it sounded as if every door and window next door was wide open.

Box pulled back the duvet and swung his legs out of bed. He always slept naked and the air in the room was cold. Like in all these old houses, the insulation was almost non-existent. He didn’t turn on the light but used the light coming between the gap in the curtains as he pulled on his underpants and jeans from the pile next to the bed. Over his bare torso he dragged on an old hoodie he sometimes wore to work.

Liz turned on the reading light next to her. She lay propped up on one elbow, watching him.

‘This isn’t a good idea, Box.’

‘What isn’t?’

‘Whatever it is you’re about to do.’

‘We need to sleep.’

‘I probably couldn’t sleep anyway.’

‘I’d at least like the option, eh.’

Suddenly very serious. ‘Box, please. Get back into bed. I’ll call noise control.’

‘I’ll just be a minute.’

He walked out into the hall and switched on the light but she followed him. ‘Box.’

‘I know.’

‘Don’t do anything silly.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I know.’

‘Promise.’

‘Word of honour.’

Liz sighed and went back into the bedroom and closed the door behind her.

Box noticed that the door to Heather’s room was partly open but the light was off. There were no sounds or signs of movement. God knows how the three girls were able to sleep. Teenagers, they could sleep through the Apocalypse.

Box went out the front door onto the veranda and found his work boots. They were still thick with mud from the school site. He didn’t bother with socks but pulled the boots over his bare feet and did up the laces, then walked down the path and out onto the road. Some time while he had been failing miserably at sleeping the southerly storm had blown through to the north. There were no clouds now and he could see a few stars in the dark sheet of the sky. It was cold and he thought that there might be a frost on the grass in the morning, maybe rain frozen to ice on the roads.

The front door and all the windows of the house next door were open. Strange light spilled out onto the excuse for a lawn along with the muddy wave of music. He realised that it was the colour that made the light strange. It was red. The place was lit up like a cut-rate brothel. The grass at Box’s feet was as dead as if it had been napalmed. During the long hot summer that had shimmered through
unbroken into a dry autumn he could never recall seeing so much as a hose over this side of the fence, let alone a working sprinkler. The bones of two rusted and picked apart cars showed clearly in the light from the door and the red glare caught the beer cans and bottles of bourbon and cola lying around.

There were half a dozen people standing by the concrete steps up to the front door, all of them smoking. To Box they looked ridiculously young, not one of them older than twenty-five. As he got up to the edge of the group the music from the open door hit him like a push in the chest.

‘Excuse me. Whose party is this?’

‘What?’

‘Whose party?’

A young guy with a thin beard met Box’s eye and then looked away. ‘It’s by invitation only.’

‘I’m from next door.’

A shrug. ‘Digger’s somewhere inside.’

‘Who?’

‘Digger. It’s his party.’

Box went up the steps. The open door led directly into a lounge. All the furniture had been removed. Packed bodies stood in the space and danced, swaying and drinking from cans and bottles, shouting into each other’s ears over the music and laughing open mouthed. Someone had painted the light bulbs. The room glowed hard red, which explained the light that Box had seen outside. The stereo’s twin speakers were against the far wall, up on a table. They were big, the size of a banana box sitting on its end. To Box they looked old-fashioned. He guessed that maybe they were so retro they were cool. The noise was deafening. It seemed to knead everyone in the room together, pushing at the edges
of the crowd until it formed a lumpen throbbing mass.

Box stood just inside the door and looked around the room. Here, he thought, was another whole new level of unreality. He should’ve been in his bed asleep, or at least looking for sleep. Instead — he gazed around at the bobbing, sweating faces glowing under the red light — this.

A skinny girl in a short denim skirt was moving on the spot directly in front of him. She seemed to be dancing by herself, though it was hard to be sure with everyone crammed together. Box tapped her on the shoulder. She turned and looked at him with mascara-dark lemur eyes. She had a large stud protruding from her skin halfway between her bottom lip and her chin.

‘I’m looking for Digger. Digger?’

The girl smiled lopsidedly and said something that Box couldn’t hear over the music, then pointed to the door on the far side of the room.

‘Thanks.’

He pressed his way through the throng. The room stank of cigarette smoke: apparently not everyone went outside to light up. Box could also smell the sweat of the dancers and the mingling fug of perfumes worn by the young women. There was the sweet smell of spilled cola and bourbon and over it all the rich tang of weed. Box was grateful that he was taller than most of the people in the room. He didn’t apologise as he used his body weight to ice-break his way slowly towards the far door. He figured people wouldn’t have been able to hear anyway.

Box got a few dirty looks before he made it to the other side of the room. The door led directly into a kitchen, which was smaller but only slightly less crowded. The smell of weed was a lot stronger. The song blasting out of
the stereo must have finished because, for a few seconds, there was quiet. Box was relieved to be free of the vice of sound pressing in against his skull. And then the next track opened up. The machine-gun guitar’s opening salvo crashed through the kitchen walls. The lyrics began as a screamed blur and then got progressively louder and more indecipherable. Box could only be grateful that he was at least now in a different room from the speakers.

‘Digger?’ he asked. ‘I’m looking for Digger.’

Blank faces, stoned or drunk, probably both. A few of the young guys were openly antagonistic, eyeing him up. His age and his clothes made him stand out as belonging to a different tribe.

‘Digger?’

‘Nah.’

‘Digger?’

‘Haven’t seen him.’ A sneer and a wink at his mate.

The next person Box asked pointed to a guy with shaggy blond hair and the makings of a ginger beard who was talking to a chubby brunette over in the far corner of the room. As Box watched, the girl laughed and leaned into the guy and touched his arm.

Well, Digger’s little chat up was going to have to wait.

Box made his way over. The girl saw him coming and took her hand off the guy’s arm and straightened up.

‘Is this your party?’

The guy sensed trouble. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Are you Digger?’

He seemed to be in two minds about whether he was or wasn’t, but then he nodded. ‘Yeah. So?’

‘I live next door. You’re going to have to turn the music down. People are trying to sleep.’

Box saw Digger look around the room and then make his decision. Alcohol and the press of people there to back him up made him cocky.

‘It’s not that loud, mate. Why don’t you have a beer?’

‘I didn’t come over here to discuss it. You’re going to have to turn the music down.’

‘Relax.’

‘Look, I’m not asking.’

Box saw the switch go off in Digger’s eyes.

‘Fuck off.’

Digger turned back to the girl. She was giggling uncontrollably into her bottle. Box took a breath. This guy was making a mistake. With less alcohol on board he would have taken in Box’s broad chest and the swell of his upper arms against his T-shirt. Digger might have considered the way that the muscles in his jaw were bunched and twitchy. And maybe he might have been able to register the look in Box’s eyes. Probably above everything else he would’ve been wise to consider his eyes. Box reached out and touched his shoulder.

‘So let me get this straight, you’re not going to turn the music down?’

‘No. If you don’t like it call fucking noise control.’

Box glanced around. Several people were watching. ‘Okay.’ He shrugged.

He turned and made his way back across the kitchen. As he walked away he heard Digger say two words behind his back. The chubby brunette let out a high laugh like a whelping seal.

In the lounge Box waded through the crowd to the big speakers. He positioned himself directly in front of the speaker on the left. The word ‘Sony’ was written across the
bottom in metallic letters. Up this close, Box could see that the speaker was moving like a living thing, as if it had lungs that were throbbing behind the cloth skin as it took urgent breaths. Box adjusted his feet, drew back his right arm just below shoulder height and drove his fist into the speaker.

He punched it as hard as he could, which, all things considered — his size, his boxing training, his naked rage and frustration — was pretty hard. He felt his fist go through the material and make contact with the guts of the thing. Something vibrated out to meet his knuckles, then crumpled back. The speaker was at the back of the table, up against the wall, so his punch didn’t knock it over. His fist simply disappeared, along with his forearm almost up to the elbow, shattering and splintering everything it came into contact with.

When Box pulled out his fist his knuckles were bleeding. He didn’t feel the pain yet. In one fluid movement he withdrew his fist and stepped sideways. He used the same fist, his right, punching the second speaker as hard as he could, swivelling into the blow so that it carried the weight of his body right up from his feet.

People had turned towards him after the first speaker died. Shocked disbelieving faces. But no one had yet moved to stop him.

The speaker he’d just hit continued to give out a intermittent throb. The noise annoyed him so he put both hands around the thing and lifted it and dropped it on the ground in front of him before stomping down on it with his right boot. That did the trick. The noise stopped entirely. Suddenly Box was standing in a quiet room. The people closest to him now looked scared. They were young women mostly, backing away from him — the stray dog who had just wandered into the playground and savaged a kid.

Box turned and headed towards the door. This time a path opened up for him. Like Moses, he thought. If the Red Sea had been a crowd of inconsiderate pissheads.

And then he was outside and grateful for the cool autumn air.

‘Hey! Stop!’

With one hand already on the gate, Box turned. He saw Digger and three young men coming towards him. It was Digger who was yelling. They stopped about two metres away. He saw that the guy on Digger’s left held a bottle by its neck.

‘What the fuck did you do that for? You fucking cunt.’