Dogside Story Read online




  Dogside Story

  Patricia Grace

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Penguin Group (NZ), 2001

  Copyright © Patricia Grace 2001

  The right of Patricia Grace to be identified as the author of this work in terms of section 96 of the Copyright Act 1994 is hereby asserted.

  Digital conversion by Pindar NZ

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.

  www.penguin.co.nz

  ISBN 9781742288161

  For Joyce and Te Ao Mania

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks to the Arts Board of Creative New Zealand for assistance while writing Dogside Story.

  Thanks also to the staff of Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa and of the Tolaga Bay Community Library.

  Special thanks to Ray Binet, Don Milward, Ludmilla Smith, Charlene Williams and Kaya Grace.

  Chapter One

  This first part of the story is about two sisters, Ngarua and Maraenohonoho, who quarrelled over a canoe.

  The sisters lived on the coast of the north side of a tidal river that came down from far back in the ranges and mouthed out into a wide bay. Far beyond the bay was where the morning sun tipped up out of the sea and flipped back across the sky like a slow, many-coloured fish, travelling the high arc until it dropped and splashed down again beyond the mountains. This northern curve of the bay was bordered by rock and steep white cliffs. In the clearings, here and there between the inlet and the cliffs, people had built their ancestral house, their sleeping houses and cooking shelters, and had made their gardens.

  On the other side of the inlet, bordering the south end of the bay, were low cliffs of yellow rock centred by a blowhole which at low tide stood dry, enabling a way through to a sheltered cove which was a favoured fishing place. At this time no one lived on the south side.

  The canoe that the sisters quarrelled over was small and old and suitable only to take a single paddler from one side of the inlet to the other. Once across, the paddler would have to take the canoe to high ground and turn it upside down to get the water out of it and allow it to dry.

  There were other canoes and other ways of crossing the inlet. On most days at low tide there were places where the inlet could be easily forded on foot, and even at half tide it was possible to cross on horseback. In good weather it wasn’t too far to swim. Also there wasn’t much necessity for crossing the inlet unless it was to hunt pigs on the scrub-covered hills beyond the rocks or to go overland to the cove or perhaps make a journey south, but for such crossings bigger craft with room for goods or equipment were needed.

  But the canoe had belonged to Ngarua and Maraenohonoho’s brother who had been fifteen years old when the elder of his two sisters was born. He’d looked after them ever since they learned to walk, been patient with their games, listened to their complaints, allowed them to sleep one each side of him at night, and had always tried to show even-handedness when they competed for his attention and affection.

  By the time the two women were in their thirties both their parents had died and it was their brother who was their champion when elders wanted to marry them off to two old men seeking wives. He’d stood firm in refusal on his sisters’ behalf and had sent them north to relatives, out of the way until the fuss died down.

  While they were away the sisters, who up until then had shown little interest in marriage, found prospective husbands without help from anyone, and eventually returned to their brother’s place to seek family approval.

  So not long after their return they were married—though it was said that what love they had for their new husbands never ever matched the love they held for their brother. Even after some years of marriage, and with children who could have distracted them from it, they still became jealous if they felt their brother had shown favour to one of them above the other.

  When their brother died they were distraught. They had to be pulled off the casket when the pallbearers were ready to head the procession to the urupa, then once there, had to be dragged away from the graveside when they attempted to throw themselves into the hole and onto the box along with their brother’s gun and his clothing.

  After the burial, and after the burning of his death shelter and his palliasse, there was only one thing remaining that was personal to their brother. That was the canoe that he’d made when he was a boy. He had sat them in it and pushed them about in shallow water when they were babies. They had waited in it while he fished. Now both claimed the canoe, and though it was of no real use to either of them they pretended that it was and made up excuses for needing to cross the inlet in that canoe, that and no other.

  They began removing the canoe from its usual place by the water and hiding it from each other. Ngarua would hide it, and Maraenohonoho wouldn’t rest until she’d found it, waiting until Ngarua had her back turned so she could hide it somewhere else.

  The sisters would go to extremes in order to distract each other while they searched for the canoe. Once Ngarua led Maraenohonoho’s children into heavy bush and left them there, and while her sister and the people were searching for the children she dragged the canoe to a new hiding place. On another occasion Maraenohonoho reported seeing someone fall from the cliff tops onto the rocks below. She set out along the shore with the searchers but turned back in order to get the canoe and hide it in the trees.

  The people soon became tired of all this. There had to be an end to it and they were awaiting an opportunity to break up the canoe, perhaps set fire to it, or hole it and push it out to sea, but in the end they never got the chance.

  The sisters guessed what was in the people’s minds and realised the canoe would never be safe in any hiding place now. It had to be where they could see it and they had to watch each other and everyone else as well, after all the canoe was not just a canoe, never had been just a canoe to them. It was the memory of their brother. It was their brother. It was all that he’d meant to them in the past, and it was all that he meant to them now. It was his heart, his love for them, and each wanted that heart and that love for herself. Neither of the sisters held any love for each other and one would have died rather than let the other have this, their brother’s heart, their brother’s love.

  One night the sisters were sitting on the banks of the inlet, separate from each other but both keeping the canoe in sight, waiting for the other to be distracted in s
ome way. There was a horn-shaped moon giving ragged light to the water through the branches and foliage of trees that lined the inlet, and it was when a cloud passed over the moon that Ngarua and Maraenohonoho both saw an opportunity and raced to snatch the canoe with the intention of taking it across the water and remaining with it on the other side. Ngarua, who was smaller and quicker than Maraenohonoho, reached the canoe first, pushed it down and into the water, stepped in and pitched away from the shore.

  Seeing that Ngarua had beaten her to it, Maraenohonoho took up a heavy piece of driftwood, rushed out and launched the branch through the water, cursing as best she knew how. The wood struck the already frail canoe and made a large hole in it.

  Ngarua continued to paddle as the canoe began to sink, then as it went from beneath her she swam, finally walking out on the other side of the inlet from where she never returned.

  The canoe was never retrieved from the water.

  The next morning Ngarua’s husband rolled blankets and clothing into a bundle and tied it on to the back of his horse along with a billycan and his gun. At low tide he tied their youngest child to his back, then leading his horse bearing the three older children, crossed the inlet to join his wife, followed by several dogs who thought there was a pig hunt on.

  During the next few days Ngarua and her husband were joined by others who found themselves in sympathy with Ngarua, or who may have had their own dissatisfactions with life on that northern side, or who maybe followed because their dog had gone. Over the years, disagreement or whim caused further defections from the north side, and gradually the populations of Northside and Southside evened out.

  Though the division had come about because of jealousy and quarrelling, people on the north side held no severe animosity against those who had crossed over. However, they did hold disdain. They, the Northsiders, were the stayers, the originals, those resident in the place where their ancestors’ bones were buried. They had established gardens on the fertile areas of flat land at the base of the hills and were the caretakers of lands, sacred sites and of the ancestral meeting house—all of which made them superior, at least in their own eyes.

  Neither did the Southsiders have outstanding bad feeling for those they’d left behind. They were all family after all and they’d lived together well enough for many generations. But the inlet-crossers now saw themselves as the ones who’d stood no nonsense, those who’d acted on principle, and this is what they believed gave them the edge. Adventurers they were. Movers, changers, seekers.

  As quickly as they could, after making their houses and setting up fireplaces, the Southsiders made gardens of their own, increasing them in size each year until they were more extensive than those on the north side. In response to the situation of ancestral remains they established a new burial ground. This was at the time of the death of an old woman who had crossed the inlet not far behind Ngarua’s husband and children. They couldn’t pretend that this was quite the same however, after all there were many chiefly people and many loved people buried in the old place, including the brother. There was nothing they could do about that.

  But once they were established, Ngarua spoke about a new meeting house as a way of stamping authority on the new settlement, and people began to plan. The new wharenui was larger and more strongly built than the old one of Northside, and according to those who had made it, more finely decorated.

  Modernity and size didn’t impress the Northsiders, or if they were impressed they didn’t admit to it, after all theirs would always be the first house, the senior house, which gave it greater importance. Anyway, they thought the small amount of carving on the exterior of the Southside house to be unstylish and rough, and weren’t surprised that there were no interior carvings if that was the best their cross-over relatives could do. The rafters—that important place of ancestral backbone and ribs, the place where stories hang and where talk is recorded—they considered to be meanly decorated and wondered why they’d bothered at all.

  The new meeting house must have struck a note on a hollow bone somewhere, however. Not long after it opened Maraenohonoho announced that they, of Northside, would build a church. It was the first but not the last of many churches that were eventually built on Northside.

  Before the sisters died they saw roads go through the area, saw bridges, shops and banks built. Coaches and eventually motor vehicles arrived, and so did farmers. They witnessed the softening of the land.

  Northside and Southside children now went to school together, their parents and grandparents met in the stores, the clubs, the pubs and the churches. They came together for tangihanga and when there was a Northside wedding or other event the relatives from Southside always attended, and vice versa.

  But there was competitiveness about what one side or the other could provide for such occasions, whether it was fish or pork or produce. One side was always looking for reason to feel high-souled about the other.

  According to the Northside story, the reason that it was Ngarua and not Maraenohonoho who reached the canoe first on its final night on water was that Maraenohonoho was preoccupied with God when she was taken advantage of by Ngarua. Maraenohonoho, they said—to whom legend had given exceptional beauty, grace, dignity and goodness—was deep in prayer, so her distractions were for high and holy reasons and were therefore understandable. Maraenohonoho began to be seen as the saviour of her people who was second only to the Great Saviour. She was the one who had chosen to remain with her lands, her people, their bones, their ancestral house. The other side of the inlet was another country.

  To subsequent Northside generations this all translated into them seeing themselves as cultured, devout, principled, steadfast people who deserved and enjoyed the love of God. They cared for their churches, their families, their houses, and later their vehicles and their lawns. They kept order. They dressed their children properly, cleaned their hair and made sure they attended school. They paid attention to teeth.

  They had opinions about their relations on Southside based on what they knew of Ngarua and on what they saw with their own eyes. These Southsiders were rough and ungodly, loudmouthed and without morals. Their houses were falling down, their clothes were shabby, they drove round in clapped-out cars and were always accompanied by their mongrel dogs. They were alkies and no-hopers, useless hua who sent their kids to school barefoot and let them run wild. They were dog thieves too.

  But the Southsiders knew their ancestor Ngarua had just been too smart for Maraenohonoho, who they said was a foolish, lazy woman who had not been engrossed in prayer at all but had gone to sleep at a vital moment. Ngarua, of great patience, intelligence and beauty, had skilfully judged the moment to get up and lead them all off into adventure. That was why they, the Southsiders of today, in their own opinion, were so outgoing, so fun-seeking and resourceful. They were generous, intelligent and unafraid, and their kids didn’t need shoes and flash clothes in order to outdo their crybaby, stay-at-home cousins at school. They saw the Northsiders as people who had no idea of how to enjoy life. They were sore losers who lived beyond their means, and even though they were bike-riding, bible-bashing teetotallers, they were known to be light fingered as well.

  The number of churches on Northside led to it becoming known as Godside, while the number of dogs on Southside led to it becoming known as Dogside.

  From now on the story becomes one-sided. It favours Dogside.

  Chapter Two

  That Kid.

  Stretched out flat with water now almost reaching the foot with the good shoe on it that had been given to him by Arch, and with his head resting on a stone that was rough and becoming uncomfortable, and even with his eyes closed while he waited for Jase and Bones to come and get him, Rua knew it was Kid up on the beach creeping down. It was Kid his dog had gone up to meet.

  Eyes on him he could feel. Two black spiders were her eyes.

  In her mouth were words, waiting.

  If he’d been two-legged he’d have waited, let her come clos
e, then he would’ve flipped up, yelled, dropped his tongue, scared the wingnuts out of her and chased her home. But he was stuck. Even the crutches were too far away for him to grab and jump up. She knew that.

  Or he could do a quick roll, grab one of the crutches, aim, fire—tada dada da, tada dada da—which wouldn’t scare her, stop her coming square and flat-faced with her black spiders and her words.

  He’d have to shift in a minute before the water got to his shoe, which was a pretty flash sort of shoe, flasher than what was necessary to get him into the pub dressed in Tidy Dress—in clean jeans with one leg pinned up, black tee shirt, black jacket which at the moment was folded there on the crutches. His head was resting on a bloody sore rock to keep the sand out of his hair, keep his hair tied back for the tidy-dress pub. The cousins were late picking him up. The tide was just about getting in old Arch’s shoe but if he moved Kid would know he wasn’t asleep.

  Pain, her.

  She knew he wasn’t asleep anyway.

  She knew he knew she knew.

  No, Arch, who had a thing about shoes, who was a real shoehead, wouldn’t like it if he saw the tide getting up around this one now that he’d parted with it. ‘On’y you, Son. On’y you, Rua. On’y one I’d give my shoes to, in honour of the misfortune that has come to you. Come wit’ me.’

  Archie had taken him, along with Jase and Bones, into his new bedroom and shown him a row of pairs, heels hard up against the whole length of a wall, like lined up ready to march or dance forward.

  He’d seen all these shoes while he was growing up, not all set out like that, but usually just one pair at a time. Seen them stepping out, going for the bus during Arch’s working years—lifting, lifting, so as not to get marked from the holey, dusty road. Or he’d seen them dancing at weddings, or rocking and jumping heel to toe at a guitar party or planted each side of a guitar when Arch decided to upend the instrument and play it as if it were a double bass.