Kate Shaw's winning article is a compelling read. Photo / 123rf
Kate Shaw's winning article is a compelling read. Photo / 123rf
The annual National Short Story Competition run by the Northland branch of the New Zealand Society of Authors was run late last year.
Judges Diana Menefy and Eddie Williams had a hard time choosing between all the entries as the standard was so high.
They began by moving 15 stories into a ‘possible winners’ pile. These were filtered down to eight stories, and eventually a short list of five.
When they met to finalise the winners they were delighted to discover they had selected the same five front-runners. The aim was to reach a consensus on the top three placings but they found the other two stories were so close to being placed they wanted to acknowledge them as highly commended.
These were: The Parenting Index by Toni Daly, Tutukaka, and Pride and Prejudice by Sun Lyoung Kim, Puwera.
His eyes blur. His focus shifts as raindrops hit the glass. Dark shadows stretch out long and lean, making the world seem bigger. Or smaller. He reaches for the coffee cup, discarded but not empty, the hard black shell still faintly warm. His jacket rides up, exposing his wrist to the cold before he manages to shuffle it back into position.
The rain is falling in earnest now, wind peppering it across the windshield. It’s not a downpour, just enough to sit on the ground, to catch in the beam of the headlights. The road ahead glistens, stretches out further than the beams. Tyres swish monotonously.
Kate Shaw, of Nelson, won the Northland short story competition.
The rain’s sheeting the road now. Everything slows. The high beams hit a clump of trees. He’s got nowhere to be. Not tonight, at least. He turns the wheel, angles in, slinks around just out of sight. Cabbage trees mark the rest area but there’s enough scrubby bush to provide cover, enough gravelled space to stretch road-wary legs, walk out some kinks.
He shrugs against the collar of his jacket. Trying to retain the car warmth against the night. He’s been bouncing across the country, Northland to Wellington and everywhere in between, never where it matters. None of it sits right. He can’t reach it, but he can’t turn back. Still, he’s gotta hit a town before the weather packs up in earnest. He breathes in the air. Rain, asphalt, dirt, exhaust. No wind now, just fat drops splattering across the streak of the car beams, leaving puddles in the gravel. Temperature’s dropping though. In a couple of days, it’ll be too cold to bed down in the car. A week, maybe, if he’s lucky. For now, a few hours’ sleep is the best he can do.
The rain’s stopped. You can usually outrun the weather on the road, at least for a while. He flicks the radio on, drowns out the silence. There’s coverage at least 60 per cent of the time. Even static beats the quiet sometimes. The next town’s gonna be the one he sticks to, at least for a couple of days. He needs to get out. Be with people. With other drifters, fading in and out, or with real people – those who stay, who build, who belong.
A yellowing Tip-Top sign. Dusty footpaths even though he’s driven through rain. He’s only been driving a few days. Could keep on. Should keep on. Maybe down the road, a piece, he’ll get lucky, find a nicer town. A teashop serving ham sandwiches thick with butter. Ladies in aprons quick to smile but happy to leave him be. A place to rest, recharge just for a while. Yeah, and maybe there’ll be a five-star hotel with room service and a bar that gives you free beer at happy hour too. Hasn’t happened yet.
He pulls into the car park. Va’ncy light flickering. Another no-tell motel. It could be anywhere. The few cars scattered around look like they’ve been run hard.
He tosses two hundred to the woman on the desk. It’ll buy him a few days. She smiles and shakes her head at another soul lost to the road. He smiles back. Tries to find the spark to show her he’s not there yet. He’s still got somewhere to be. He’s not sure if he succeeds.
He sleeps ten hours straight. Collapsed, bone-weary, out cold on top of the beige-patterned cover hiding even beiger sheets. Dead-tired nights beat the nights when his mind stays active. Nights spent tossing and turning on what-ifs. Ideas missed, chances not taken—or worse yet, chances taken that didn’t pan out. Most nights have him backtracking and second-guessing. Still, he’d even take those nights if they held the dreams at bay. Dream-nights are the worst. Dry breezes, warm smiles. Icecream on still days, laughter and sorrow mingled, comforting and comfortable. The dreams leave him cold, desolate, clinging to fading images, struggling for breath like the gasps of a dying man. He sighs, long, drawn out. He crashed out around seven last night, so the light of dawn is hardly hinted at through the gaping curtains. He feels like he’s still on the road.
Monotonous, monochrome.
Too much silence, too much grey.
He stares unseeing at another motel ceiling. He doesn’t need to look to know the paint’s peeling, damp spots spreading toward the wall. He sees green eyes and a sea of blonde hair, freckles scattered across a sunburnt nose. Bare feet dug into the sand.
Breath stuttering, he screws his eyes closed. He hates the moment between waking and sleep. Inattention lets too much through. He flicks the switch that turns the room from sepia to beige, swings his jean-clad legs out of bed, stockinged feet hitting the cold carpet. How does it work when you wake up more tired than before? He plunders his duffel, pulls out a change of clothes. Shower first. Then he can review, reflect, renege.
Steam from the bathroom pillows into the room as the first rays of light filter through the still-uncovered window. Clean and dry.
At least cleansed of road dust if nothing else. He flicks on the half-filled jug. Turns the white mug upright and picks up the Bell teabag, its packet limp. His eyes slide to the chairback, drawn to the notebook peeking out of his jacket pocket.
Its well-worn cover shields well-worn pages. Not tatty, just over-thumbed. Her picture creased and cracked, tucked into the first page.
It took her slowly at first, like a page tingeing brown on the edges, subtle enough that they didn’t notice. Until they did. It was the movements that he lost first.
The little touches they’d once shared. She’d once walked close, knocking her shoulders into his chest, or brushing her hands across his knuckles. He mourned their loss in silence, his smile at her jokes pulling just a fraction tighter, his embrace held just a moment longer.
She knew it too, but she’d let him cover for her as long as she could. Their days went next. Slipping off the page like they’d never been. Colours erased from her palette, leaving the slate clean and bare.
He’d started running then. Dragging her into new memories, determined to keep ahead of the slide. But she’d slowed. Tugging him back, making him live gentle and sure, making their memories deep and true.
Making new dreams, she’d said.
He knew it was wrong even then.
But he’d stayed.
He’d stayed long past her forgetting the good times, long past her forgetting him, forgetting them. He’d stayed until the pain in his eyes brought her to tears. The world was tipping, and they were standing on slippery floors with nothing to hold on to.
He’d searched alone through his memories, ticking off the changes he’d noticed in her, in them. Changes that he’d discarded as natural, as the ebb and flow of a relationship. He’d searched, begged, bargained, hellbent on finding a way to undo what was done. A way to go back. A way to gather up the shards of their life left shattered along the highways and move forward. His memories never able to rewrite time.
He should have been someone else to her. Been whoever she needed him to be. Been whoever would keep her close. It was raining then, too, he remembered.
He opens the notebook as if this time it’ll show him answers. As if this time it’ll show him salvation. He thumbs it again, almost cover to cover. It’s hard to keep moving if you’ve got nowhere to go.
Hard to keep running.
Harder still to stay put.
Maybe nowhere’s direction enough.
Sometimes people crowd out the silence, and he can’t hear her story. He both craves and hates those times. It’s selfish. It’s survival.
He closes the book. His hands clench around its cover, creasing it in a familiar bend. He lets out a sigh. A strangled exhale held till his lungs burn.
He knows it’s time.
Knows time’s running out.
Knows she’s already timeless, but he needs to see it through.
He loosens his grasp, straightens the bent, twisted book, and flips to the back page. The page he’s ignored. The page he can’t ignore. SUNSET DEMENTIA CARE. Visiting hours 9-3.
The cops’ve brought a battering ram this time cause Dad nailed timber on the back of the door and it only takes a couple of thuds before you see fingers of light poke through the cracks and the shouting begins.
Sunlight spears your chest. You stand shocked but not surprised. Happened when you were three, then eight, and now you’re eleven, and if ninjas with semi-automatic guns toss you out and you have to go live with another uncle or stepmum cause Dad’s been naughty again, it’s no biggie.
As the ninjas tear open the house and light invades, you grab your treasures, cram them in a Pak’nSave bag. Mostly just Pokémon cards. There’s a long-forgotten Nerf gun in a palm tree in the hall with roots and creepers growing over it, abandoned cause you never had anyone else to play Nerf Wars with you, and you tug the yellow plastic pistol free of roots and in the tangle comes a tiny plant with two sad, ant-sized fluffy little leaves, sprouting out of a discarded smoke with green herbs in it Dad’s friend mashed out. Too many seeds, Dad’s friend reckoned.
So long as the next person you’re dumped with has weeds growing in their basement under the 24/7 lights it won’t be that bad. Need that normalness. A new treehouse-hut-home. Like Jumanji. That movie’s choice. Epic journey; the boy finds his old man in the end. Or becomes him. Same diff.
Ninjas tear the plywood off the windows, letting light in as they search the dusky house. You shove your gold foil Bulbasaur card in one pants pocket and the sprouting herby cigarette in the other, crumbs and all. The ninjas surge past you like a king tide, washing through the rooms, poking their guns into corners and calling Dad’s court name.
Outside, you sit on the top step like it’s a bus stop. Child Protection aunty comes and kneels. Ain’t that bad. You get presents and new pyjamas when you move. Doesn’t matter if your journey takes you somewhere stink. It’s actually more annoying when people make you think there’s hope.
A soft aunty with big Samoan boobs and a flower-dress pushes a box of Lego into your arm and folds your finger round a cup of hot chocolate.
‘Weedy little thing, aren’t you? You ever get out of here much?’
Riverhead Forest, you want to explain.Used to play with your Tonka dumptruck scooping up pine needles while Dad dealt with men on motorbikes. There was a hole in the forest floor. Dad and his mates would snigger as you cleared the pine needles with your toy truck, then when you uncovered the rope handle they’d lift the wooden lid off the ground. Steps down into the hole, a small ladder. Lights down there, pipes, beakers, metal drums, boiler suits.
A yell behind you. Wrestling. Dad’s friend who guards the weeds is battling the ninja-scrum. He fights them wearing only tattoos. Meat, they call him. Sorta like an uncle. Closest dude to Dad. He’s put in a van with letters on the side saying Armed Offenders Squad.
A scream down in the basement where you’re not allowed, the basement that stinks of veggies. They’ve got Dad, or one of his traps has got one of the ninjas. It’ll mean jail for Dad again, probly.
‘Can you guys, like, adopt me or whatever?’ you ask the Aunty.
She buys you a Happy Meal. Soon you stop asking.
*
Place is like Hogwarts. Half-school, half-fortress, a castle four storeys tall tucked behind hedges so the neighbours don’t have to see unwanted kids.
Try to think of it as home, they tell you. Them bars on the windows? Means you’re safe here, son.
Two old married brown people come out onto the driveway. Their grinning eyes scrunch and crumple like accordions. Hildie and Edward. Don’t worry, kiddo. We’ve had hundreds of boys just like you.
Hildie and Edward promise to wash your clothes. Fabric softener to coax the rotten vegetable stink out.
They give you your own room with a stationery pack and exercise books on the little desk. Newspaper under this pot plant. Headline: Dealer convicted over cannabis operation.
The plant’s a Jumanji jungly guy with big spaces in the leaves. Enough dirt in the pot to dig a small hole and tuck in your seed from that mouldy old stinky herb-smoke. Pour on some water. It’ll put down roots and grow and be like all the other plants so long as no one moves it.
The bedspread has no burn holes in it and no Bob Marley face. Doesn’t feel safe. You sleep in the corner between the mattress and the wall, clutching a butter knife. Watching the door in case ninjas burst in.
*
You see Dad in the paper two times. Ugly photo, all alone in a wood box. Then never again.
You start Mt Roskill Grammar. Immediately look for the naughty boys so you don’t set yourself up with hope or expectation or any of that disappointing stuff. Get your head shaved so there’s nothing for kids to rip out in fights. Don’t carry lunch so there’s nothing that can be stolen from you. Trade Pokémon cards on break time with the other smokers.
You hang onto Bulbasaur, though. Bulbasaur is the plant with power. Just needs water and a little attention and he’ll grow up strong enough to beat anyone.
You and your boys stand around at break time, toeing the dandelions in the cracks of the concrete. The Bloods jump you in, each of them punching you in the head in the toilets. After that you’re officially in the crew. Weedling is your sign, your tag, your gang name. At break time, when your crew’s not swapping Pikachu for Jigglypuff cards, you deal ciggies and joints. Pills from Hildie’s medicine cabinet.
School’s okay, at the bottom. No big expectations on you; no harsh light burning your leaves. Maths is okay, learning how to translate ounces to grams to milligrams, but what you really sit up for is science - bio, specially botany. Science is, like, the only stable thing. Oil, acid, emulsion, molecular bonds. Learning how weeds are no less valuable than other flora. Just freer, chancier, hungrier to live.
History is the only other good subject, even the boring settler history that makes your Bloods snore with their jerseys over their heads.
You stick around after class. Ms Chimamanda puts scabies cream on your knuckles. She’s, like, Christian and she wants to save you or whatever. Insists on helping you understand where you’ve come from. Traces your Dad’s court name back to old shipping manifests from the 1870s. She sees you – what’s that word – objectily? Talks about your ancestors’ journey from England, the shipping company ripping them off. “Inherited poverty,” apparently.
A little bit each day, five minutes between periods, she finds the right websites, books, dusty sepia photos. Seems your people – the scum of Sheffield – were dumped on these shores. They’ve set their expectations low ever since. Not exactly slaves. More like paving.
Men brewing chemicals to pass the time. Make life less serious. To wash out migration companies’ lies, promises that New Zealand was a chance to plant roots, to grow anew. Took ‘em generations to understand they were weeds. Perfectly good organism, just planted in the wrong place so the weed grows up crooked.
So starting out as unskilled shovellers, skinners, sealers, fingernail-splitting gum digging, they took up moonshining on the side. Manufactured every naughty thing that came along. Your dad got into it at 14 and his dad got into it at 14 and his dad, all the way back. Grog then wacky baccy. Poppies, next, then coke in the 70s, speed in the 80s. Happy pills in the 90s. Meth last Monday.
All of this, in the essay Ms Chimamanda encourages you to write and enter in that competition, and you win, cause it’s raw and fresh. Refuse to go on stage for the principal’s handshake, though. You just laugh about it with your Bloods at break time. Surprised the judges thought your essay was “confrontational” and “bold” and “honest”, lol. Everything in the essay’s just your normal daily deal.
S’all good, you tell Ms Chimamanda, throwing your bag over your shoulder.
Walking out. This journey takes you to the parking lot, where there’s growling.
School ain’t the right soil. Gonna do an apprenticeship.
‘Hang on, whoa whoa whoa, hold up,’ she’s saying. ‘Wesley - this is way too abrupt, too sudden?’
‘Not really, miss. It was always in the post, know what I’m sayin’? But cheers for, like, helping me … what’s that thing the counsellor’s always sayin’? Adjust my expectations.’
Meat is waiting on his Harley in the parking lot. Picking you up gently, for now.
Later he’ll brush the pine needles aside, force the seed down in the hole, underground.
There’s a knocking at the door. The sound echoes down to my bedroom, and penetrates my brain, which still has last night’s bourbon sloshing around in it. The sound’s not loud, but it’s rapid and urgent, and continues for a few moments. Then it stops and I return gratefully to my dreams of a better life. But it starts again, and this time the hammering’s enough to disturb the neurones of any dead man walking.
‘Yeah, coming!’ I manage as I stumble along the worn lino of a thousand wears and tears. The Chungs from next door wanting my wheelbarrow again? Or the Singhs from the other side needing something? Somebody actually returning something they’ve borrowed?
I glimpse myself in the hall mirror. Sixty years. Sun-nuked scalp shining through sparse hair, days of chin stubble, beer-barrel gut, eyes too embarrassed to look at themselves. I see I’m still in last night’s clobber from watching the game down at the pub. Warriors jersey and track pants. They won and surely I’m allowed to celebrate? I make a mental note to see about upgrading the jersey which is several years old.
As I open the door I have to dodge a bottle that is being swung vigorously at it.
‘Maya! What’s wrong?’ It’s the little Somali girl from three down. Seven years old, angel face framed in a hijab, her huge, anxious brown eyes fixed on me. She’s been using an empty Jimmie Beam from my recycle bin to get my attention. I peer at the time. It’s nine o’clock, and by now her mother should have dropped her at school.
‘Mama not come back, Mista King.’ Her voice is so little it seems a distant echo.
There are tears in her eyes, and I gently usher her inside. ‘Come in, love.’
Resolution Rd has been turned into a cul-de-sac with the new motorway, but should have been renamed United Nations Close. It’s mostly social welfare housing, like mine.
‘She went to shop. We run out of Weet-Bix.’
‘How long ago was this, Maya?’ I take the bottle from her and examine it hopefully for signs of maybe a mouthful or two of liquid sunshine left in the bottom. No such luck.
‘Mama left it with me.’ Pulling a phone from the pocket of the long black gown-thingy they wear, she hands it to me. ‘I phone you. You not answer.’
This is our standard arrangement, but my phone’s on the kitchen bench, a long stagger from my bedroom, and there’s no way I would have heard it in my state.
‘Sit down here. I’m sure everything’s okay.’ She sits obediently on one of my plastic bargain chairs while I find a glass that looks reasonably clean and pour her some water. I need to try and think clearly through the bad haze that won’t go away. ‘Right. I’ll go find her. I’ll take you home, and you can wait there in case she turns up. Okay?’
‘Come on then.’ I put an arm around her shoulders and coax her gently outside. I can feel her little heart racing. Then I lock my door, and leave the key under the mat. Some of my neighbours know they can come in and borrow whatever they want. I trust them because there are no agendas behind the torn and faded curtains of Resolution Rd. No, siree.
I have become, by default, the unofficial head honcho of our road. Support person, trusted go-to guy. I once had a house maintenance business in a better part of town until my chainsaw slipped and attacked my left leg just above the knee. The loss of my appendage eventually led to the departure of my wife. It probably seems heartless, but you can blame an amber liquid mostly for that disaster. Something I needed firstly for the pain, then afterwards to drown my stupid, ongoing sorrows. My two kids are overseas with sparse online contact.
So I’ve got all the tools and the knowhow. I can’t do much myself, but they come to me to borrow stuff, and get advice about all sorts—gardening, health, Government paperwork. It’s an effort, but I somehow manage to navigate this through my storms of insobriety.
There’s not much sign of life out in the street, but it’s mid-morning and most of my neighbours are either working, or sleeping off a night shift.
We get to Maya’s house, and I use a key I’ve been entrusted with. Selahi, Maya’s mother, is a solo parent. The child’s father was killed in some sort of terrorist raid in their home country. They came as refugees so the sweet little girl is an only child in an alien country.
They were one of the lucky families that made it here. I look out for them and have gone out of my way to make them welcome and help them. I’ve even minded Maya a few times lately, while her mother went out seeking part-time work that would fit in with school hours.
The inside is basic, but clean, with those spicy, lingering odours from foreign cuisines. I tell Maya to sit tight with her door locked, and only open it for me or her mother. I have my own phone, and will call her as soon as I know anything.
The store’s not far and I limp there as quickly as I can. The owner flashes his smiling teeth as I enter. ‘Hello, Mister King.’
‘Hey, Ashad, has Mrs Ansoli been in this morning? She went out shopping and hasn’t returned.’
‘Yes, she came in. But we are out of Weet-Bix so I said to try the Four Square.’
‘Thanks mate. Let me know if you see her.’ I give him my phone number and lope off again towards the main-road corner, dragging my unwilling prosthesis.
It’s five minutes away but the guy on the counter is no help to me. ‘I don’t know any Mrs Ansoli. Don’t think she’s a regular here. Sorry but no lady like that in this morning, mate. Up the Wahs, eh!’
I give him my number and wander up and down the streets for half an hour, asking everybody I come across and knocking on doors of people I know. Everybody’s concerned, and there are offers to help search. I decide it’s time to contact the police, but before I can dial them my mobile rings. It’s the owner of the Four Square.
‘Thought I better contact you, Mr King. A customer was in and said there was a Muslim lady knocked down by a truck on the crossing earlier. She’s alive, but it looked really bad apparently. They rushed her off in an ambulance to the hospital ED.’
‘Thank you,’ I manage to get out. Now my heart’s like I’ve pounded up the Sky Tower staircase with a backpack of cold ones. A call to the local hospital confirms my worst fears.
Selahi Ansoli admitted. Severe injuries. Critical.
I limp home, dreading having to deliver that message to such a small child. Maya shrinks and shivers from me as I explain to her. Her eyes are wide and her lips are quivering, but she does not say anything as I take her small hands in mine and say softly. ‘Maya, you must be brave.’
She gives a little cry which turns to a sob, and throws her arms around my neck. I hold her tight as she nuzzles my neck. She smells of some sort of florally perfumed soap and I wonder if my own boozy odour is noticeable and objectionable to her.
The Matenga family have spare beds and I know Aroha and Tana will step up. Maya can walk to school and back with their kids. I can borrow Taimati Filipi’s van to take her and myself to the hospital for visits. I will set up rosters of my people to help keep the Ansoli house and property maintained.
I’ll also deal with Child Welfare and every other agency in the book to get the best for Maya and Selahi. I will track down the truck driver and make him rue the day he ever got behind a wheel.
