Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff

Author:Alan Duff [Duff, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9781775533610
Publisher: Random House New Zealand
Published: 2012-12-07T05:00:00+00:00

(Surprise, sweet surprise) at Jake eventually breaking out in a chuckle and saying, Who’d want a big house like that anyway? Ya’d spend half ya fuckin life mowing the lawns and pickin up leaves. Eh kids? Laughing. It echoing back. (Thank goodness.) And we all know it wouldn’t be your old man pickin em up, mowing the lawns, eh kids? Aw, Dad! Going along with his act, like the experienced little actors they were where their father was concerned. Then they were heading north to Riverton, the sign saying it was left turn 500 m on, and Beth wondering when Jake was gonna slow to make the turn. Jake …? at him going straight past the turnoff. The car smokey with Jake lighting up yet another fag, even Beth not matching his puff rate. He’s upset still. So where you taking us? Around the lake. Jake, come on. We got the morning, woman. Then we c’n spend all afternoon with Boog. Eat up all that grub you got. Slarmi, and rotiss-a-sumpthin chook. Eh kids? Chuckling. Cleverly bringing em in. Okay, okay, Beth sitting back. May as well enjoy havin a car while we can. It occurring to her that they’d soon be going past the village she’d been raised in, Wainui pa. Haven’t been back since Mum’s funeral. That was, what, four — no, five — years ago. Dad’s the year before that; and everyone saying Mum, poor Raita, had died of a broken heart, that she’d given up because life without her man, Bunny (Kupa) Ransfield, wasn’t worth living. Except Beth knew it wasn’t the truth. Mum died of cancer. Lung cancer. From smoking these things, Beth looking frowningly at her cigarette before her body had her sucking at it for what it offered. And love, thinking about love between a husband and wife, and how her father never showed his love to Mum because he was of that school of being gruff, tough, manly — manly — and happier when he was around his mates, drinking with them, laughing and talking their men talk, and drinking. Beth further realising that drink played a big part in all their lives; her parents’, her husband’s, her friends’, herself (till three months ago), everyone she knew. Shaking her head at that, thinking it was such a shame and a terrible waste what drink did. And then they were slowing for her pa, as she knew Jake would. Smiling at her.

It’s changed, Beth at the old dirt road leading off this main, now sealed. Jake saying, Ya reckon? Looksa same to me. But he wouldn’t know; every time he’d been here he was drunk. And bits of the meeting house, the wharenui, its carved gables visible through the skeleton trees. Houses — and new, some of them — off to the sides of the big main community building, and not traditional but modern. Beth thinking that maybe the 1980s had finally reached her home village. Feeling nostalgia growing.

The lake there, a sliver of it beyond where a girl’d swam, played by, the usual things.

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